High School Magical
by Thor2000
Summary: High School Musical merged with Harry Potter and a bit of Wizards. Gabrielle, Troy and the East High Class as young wizards heading to Hogwarts to do their Wizard training and live an adventure.
1. Chapter 1

In an apartment loft above a sandwich shop on Waverly Place on the Lower West Side of Manhattan was the Waverly Station Sub Shop. Owned and run by Jerry Russo and his wife, Theresa, the place was something unique to the neighborhood. Pedestrians often saw lights flying by the place that defied explanation. Others saw people appearing and disappearing from outside as they looked in through the windows. The youngest at eight-years old, Max Russo, had to be psychic or something. He talked to invisible beings and got answers from empty air. His older sister, Alex, at thirteen had extraordinary good luck. When she wanted a diet soda, she always got it, even if she was several yards from the closest soda machine. Her older brother, Justin, was fourteen years old and a scientific prodigy as well as a cool athlete who could pull off magic on the basketball court, and then there was their cousin, Gabrielle Russo, who had some sort of magic thing herself. When Gigi Daniels from school taunted Gabrielle at the reptile house at the zoo, the glass vanished and Gigi fell into the display, freeing the Burmese Python inside just before the glass suddenly appeared.

Gabrielle was the daughter of Jerry's brother, Thomas Russo, and his wife Grace. To everyone concerned, Thomas and Grace had died in a car accident, but Jerry knew the truth. After the fatal fate which took their lives, he took in his niece as a tiny one-and-a-half-year-old infant and raised her as his own daughter, much to the distaste of Alex who already competed with her older brother for attention. Now she had a foster sister to compete with. Sharing her room with her after several years, Alex woke and pulled her twisted t-shirt loose then looked up to her foster sister in the other bed in her room. She looked over a bit annoyed, gestured a bit at her thirteen-year-old cousin and watched as Gabrielle stumbled out of the bed.

"What? Who?" The cute beauty sat up and looked out over the level of her bed. "I fell out of bed again."

"You've really got to be more careful." Alex acted as if she was not responsible. "I mean, you made so much noise, you woke me up."

"I'm sorry, Alex." Gabrielle was rather amiss by the whole thing. "I'll try to be more careful." She rose up on her feet and glided on her feet toward the bathroom at the end of the hall just as Justin came strolling out. It was the last week of August and he was getting ready to return to Wiz-Tech, this time as a Second Year student. Alex and Gabrielle were about to start as First Years. Wiz-Tech was the family magic school for teaching those sensitive to magic in the schooling of their powers and abilities. Justin was already adept at spells as Gabrielle and Alex were still struggling with probability and psychokinesis, simple poltergeist-level stuff. He lit up with a smile to his favorite sister and Gabrielle looked up to him a bit reserved and introverted.

"I saved it for you." Justin held the door open.

"Thanks, Justin…" Gabrielle wandered in past him with a grin rushing to her lips. She pulled her long locks of dark hair back and reached to start a shower for herself. Her hand turned the water on and checked the water, her brown eyes turning to her reflection in the mirror behind her over the sink and briefly noticing the faint scar hidden above her right eye by her long dark hair. Hidden by her long dark locks, it was not noticeable. It was supposedly an old injury from her youth.

"Gabrielle…" Alex called her from the hall.

"Alex…" Gabrielle applied toothpaste to her toothbrush and looked up. "What is it? What's wrong?"

"It's me in the bathroom next!!!" Alex pulled her out, rushed past her and slammed the door shut against her cousin. It all happened so fast! One minute, she was about to brush her teeth and take a shower and the next, she was listening to Alex laughing at her through the closed door. This happened almost every single morning and she kept falling for it.

"Alex, that's not funny!" She put her toothbrush in her mouth and pounded at the door. "I was in there next!" All she heard was Alex in the shower singing to the music of Taylor Swift. She looked up and saw her aunt coming out of the master bedroom. "Aunt Theresa, Alex kicked me out of the bathroom again!"

"Alex!!!" Theresa Russo pounded at the door for her niece. "You are not the only one in this house. You let Gabrielle in there!!!" She waited a few minutes, but the shower was going and all Alex had in her ears was shampoo.

"Honey, go use my bathroom."

"Thanks, Aunt Theresa…" Gabrielle kissed her aunt and hurried in her gown while brushing her teeth to clean and wash. If she was lucky, Harper would talk Alex into letting her go to the mall with them and then they could go to the library together without Alex. Harper was closer to Gabrielle than with Alex. Theresa meanwhile headed down to the loft where her husband the culinary maestro made breakfast for their family before opening his sandwich shop on the first floor of their home. She smelled omelets, bacon, fried potatoes and hollandaise sauce for morning breakfast.

"Something smells good…" She grinned to her true love.

"It better…" Jerry looked up with his big brown eyes. "Better dig in before the kids come down."

The door to the balcony lightly wafted open and a breeze filled the loft. Theresa looked to Jerry a moment then started on her way to close up, but on her way she stopped in her path to a large barn owl flying into the loft with a large envelope in its beak. It landed with an elegant and majestic stop on the back of their sofa, dropped the letter and looked around the room with a noble air. A flutter of its wings and it hopped off, took wing and was sailing through the room and out of the loft once more.

"Well, that's something you don't see everyday." Theresa watched the owl sail away as she reclosed the door. Jerry reacted nervously. He looked out the windows of the loft to the sky toward Hudson Bay where the owl had vanished then checked out the letter. It was sealed in wax with a school crest and printed by hand in Gothic lettering. In clean bold lettering, it read:

"Miss Gabrielle Russo

"2278 Waverly Place

"Manhattan

"New York City, NY 67103

"United States Of America."

"I wasn't expecting this…" Jerry spoke. "This is from Thomas's school."

"I thought Thomas went to Wiz-Tech." Theresa misunderstood.

"He did…" Jerry revealed. "For one year… and then he transferred to Hogwarts. He must have made arrangements for them to accept her. The problem is… I can't afford to send her to one school as our kids go to another school. I can't believe Thomas would do this to me."

"What are we going to do?"

"Well…" Jerry thought a second. "I can pretend I never got the letter."

"Hey!!!" Max had suddenly appeared racing down the stairs full of eight-year-old energy. "Did I see an owl down here?"

"Owl?" Jerry hid the letter from Hogwarts behind his back. "Owl? Did you see an owl?" He and Theresa pretended to act ignorant. "I didn't see an owl." It was now Max's chance to act suspicious. His parents were acting guilty about something. When he wanted a dog, his mother said she was allergic, and when he wanted a pet python, it was Jerry's turn to say he was allergic. Together, they had shot down his chances to own dogs, cats, fish, hamsters, guinea pigs, a brontosaurus and even sea monkeys.

"I so wanted an owl." Max lamented as he turned toward the cabinet with the boxes of cereal. Coming down behind him on the staircase was Justin ahead of Alex and Gabrielle. He was looking forward to returning to his friends in magic school like Phil, Jackson and Oliver. They played Twelve Ball together and hung out in the nearby village of Mecklenburg trying to attract girls like Keely, Miley and Chelsea. Keely was primarily Phil's girl, but there were a lot of other attractive witches and sorceresses there.

"Gabrielle," Justin looked at his cousin as he got his morning omelet and spoke of returning to school. "You are going to love it there. Best teacher: Professor Danvers. He's head of Tanglewood House and a school counselor."

"What about me?" Alex swatted her brother for attention.

"Watch out for Jake Ryan." Justin mumbled. "He's got a lousy reputation." Alex's heart sank as if that was the best advice she could get. Gabrielle meanwhile lit up as the favored daughter.

"So…" She turned to her Uncle Jerry. "Did my letter for Wiz-Tech come?" Gabrielle asked effortlessly.

Jerry and Theresa looked at each other nervously.

"Why yes it did!" Theresa finally reacted and took it down off the shelf over the stove. "It arrived the other day with Alex's. You are so going to love Wiz-Tech! Why I bet Justin can get you into Tanglewood House."

"I'd be happy if I got Swiftwind or Brightmoon." Gabrielle shined as she looked upon the letter with her name on it. "Just as long as it isn't Darkwind. Justin says it's the worst house on campus."

"Are you kidding?" Justin came up behind her. "Alex isn't a member yet and they already got her name in their list in their favorite students."

"They remembered me?" Alex grinned and looked happy. "Oh, I just love those guys."

"Justin, I want you to look after Gabrielle up there." Theresa reminded her son as Jerry ripped up the letter from Hogwarts. "It's going to be her first time away from home and don't want my little girl getting hurt, turned to stone or eaten by a werewolf." She pulled Gabrielle close and hugged her with a kiss to the cheek.

"What about me?" Alex was offended by the lack of attention.

"Well…" Theresa looked at her middle child. "I know you can take care of yourself!"

Jerry dropped the shredded Hogwarts letter into the wastebasket and dropped the lid, expecting that to be the end of it, but a week before the kids were to leave for Wiz-Tech, the owl returned with the same letter. The second day: three owls with three letters, and Wednesday: seventeen owls with seventeen letters. Before he knew it, letters were pouring from the refrigerator, the oven, drawers, closets… He was chucking them into the furnace in the basement as fast as he could. The whole time he was shoveling the bales of letters, he was screaming the same thing: "I can't afford to send her! I don't have the money to send her!!!" Alex was sometimes there helping him shovel them.

"Hey, dad…" The Sunday night before the day the kids headed off to Wiz-Tech, Alex was sitting in the basement as her father shoveled the letters. "You know, I actually read one of Gabrielle's letters, and well… I could say I was Gabrielle and…"

Jerry snatched Gabrielle's letter from her.

"I can't afford for you to go there either." He grunted as he tossed into the furnace the last few letters into the burning fireplace. That seemed to be the last of them. As he headed up to the loft with his arm over his daughter's shoulders, he realized how late it was. Theresa had headed off to bed and turned out the lights, but out on the balcony were somewhere between fifty to sixty owls encroaching and staring into their home. They were on the ledge, the bench, perched on the railing for the canopy and up against the glass; their dozens of eyes peering inside as Jerry and Alex walked past them. Their faces turned as Jerry walked past. All those eyes were spooking Alex out and giving her the creeps.

"Don't worry they'll be gone in a few days." Jerry told his daughter. He tried scaring them off, but they did not act like real owls. They just kept watching… and watching. He motioned for the stairs to the third floor and started up, but as he started up, the owls got agitated and started flying around trying to get in, but the door had been jammed shut by a chair. It started sliding out of the way by itself as Jerry rushed to stop it from moving. When he sat in it, there was a loud explosion from downstairs and he feared the owls had broken into the shop. The sound woke or roused everyone from their beds. Justin came running in his t-shirt and pajama pants. Gabrielle in her shorts and exercise top ahead of Max and her Aunt Theresa. It sounded as if something was tearing the place apart. Something was pounding at the door to the loft trying to get in just before it crashed to the floor. A massive figure appeared in the opening to the hall. It was so large that only a thin crack of light came around the profile of it.

"Sorry 'bout the door…" The giant lifted it up into place then ambled over and across the floor toward Jerry trying to keep from fainting. Lifting the door up into place, he had a huge mane of black hair and a long even thicker dark beard. Only a small portion of face of eyes, nose and eyebrows appeared of his face as he entered. "Allow me to introduce myself, Rubeus Hagrid… keeper of the keys and grounds at Hogwarts." He stood a foot and a half over Jerry. "I be looking for one Gabrielle Russo."

"That's me!!!" Alex chirped to attention before Gabrielle could respond. Her foster sister looked to her upset.

"You've changed a lot since I saw you last." Hagrid looked to her with a big smile under that large beard. "You know… I knew you when you was a mere baby. Are you ready to go?"

"Yes, I am…" Alex looked to her stunned parents. "See you, daddy…"

"Wait a minute!!!" Everyone suddenly broke from their stunned surprise and started screaming to stop Alex from leaving or Hagrid from taking her. Theresa pulled Alex back and held on to her, but amidst Justin and Jerry trying to tell the truth, it was Gabrielle jumping up higher in her nightgown and screaming louder than the rest.

"I'm Gabrielle!" She insisted. "I'm Gabrielle!" Next to her, Alex slapped her hand to her head for not being fast enough.

"Well, of course you are." Hagrid looked to ward her with that big grin again. "This is a very lucky day for you. Hogwarts is the best magic school of the twelve known magic schools for a young lady like yourself. No better place to learn wizardry and from the best wizard of them all, Albus Dumbledore."

"Hogwarts?" Gabrielle was confused. "I'm not going to Wiz-Tech with Justin and Alex?"

"I'm sorry, but…" Jerry stood up to the gentle giant. "She can't go… I just… can't afford it."

"You never read a single one of those letters you burned…" Hagrid was astounded.

"Uncle Jerry!!!" Gabrielle was offended

"If you had read but one of those letters," Hagrid continued. "You might have read that your brother left enough money at Gringotts to pay for Gabrielle's tuition many times over. Jerry Russo, you really are a piece of work!"

"What?" Jerry stood ashamed as his wife swatted him, but then he realized something else and turned to Alex. "You read one of those letters! You couldn't have told me your Uncle Thomas had ready paid for her tuition!"

"You should have been able to figure it out by the way I was trying to take her place!!!" Alex tried weakly to cover up her dishonesty. Jerry and Theresa groaned along with Justin and Max at this turn of events.

"You know…" Jerry tried to cover up his own stupidity. "I've got two other teenage wizards; is there enough room in that account for…"

"You really are a piece of work, aren't you, Russo?" Hagrid looked back at the father with one eyebrow raised.


	2. Chapter 2

2

"Dear Miss Russo…" The letter began. "Congratulations on your admission to the Hogwarts School of Wizardry and Witchcraft. We look forward to your further schooling and education in the science of magic and the mystical arts" Gabrielle finally read the letter which had been sent to her five hundred and eighty-six times before. It went on to describe the school and her required belongings to bring to school. Through the portal in the Russo's Secret Magic Lair, Hagrid took her to London and the secret wizard community known as Diagon Alley walled up within a secret section of alleys and levels closed off to regular mortal man in London's White Chapel district. Their first stop was to take money from Gabrielle's inheritance at Gringotts Bank. It was a little scary for her. It was run by troll-like beings that Hagrid claimed were goblins, but once she had her account reopened and a few coins in her pocket, Hagrid made a side trip to Vault 136 to collect those contents as well. He said it was Hogwarts business. Gabrielle was now financially capable to go off to get her magic supplies. She needed a master wand to replace her starter wand, a copper pot for spells, certain required textbooks and an animal familiar. Most young witches liked cats or birds; some of the boy wizards liked owls, rats or frogs, but Gabrielle visited Eeylops's Owl Emporium and immediately fell in love with a small white and silver barn owl named Maddie. Maddie seemed to love her too, perching on her shoulder and riding on her neck as she walked through Diagon Alley. However, when Hagrid took her to catch up with the train, Maddie went into her cage to be transported.

"Well, Gabrielle's got her spending money and supplies…" Hagrid met with Jerry and Theresa at the London Train Station. "I must be off, I've very many chores to do, but Gabrielle… I'll be seeing you a lot at Hogwarts." He stepped back to depart.

"See you there, Hagrid…" Gabrielle looked to her aunt and uncle standing with her on the stairway above the loading areas to the trains. Jerry had just sent Alex and Justin on to Wiz-Tech by the train at Gate 11 3/5 at Grand Central Station and now they were seeing their niece off to school in much the same way in the London train station.

"Honey, I am so going to miss you." Theresa hugged and kissed her niece wearing the Hogwarts uniform. "If you don't like this school, call us and we'll come get you…"

"Hogwarts is not like Wiz-Tech…" Jerry warned her as they looked for the gate. "Don't go touching any weird stones, fighting any dragons, flying any Griffins, drinking any weird potions your friends give you… Oh, and stay away from any boys. In fact, don't talk to anyone who's not a teacher."

"Jerry!" Theresa stopped him as the Danforth family rolled by them looking for Gate 9 ¾ somewhere in the station. Among them, brown-haired and boyishly cute Troy Boyden looked up to Gabrielle and gave her a little smile.

"Don't worry about that stuff, honey." Theresa walked with Gabrielle pushing her supplies on a court. "He gave the same talk to Alex." She looked up as the one of the Danforth youths in a Hogwarts uniform raced toward one of the arch supports and vanished into it. Jerry laughed at the sight of it. He'd never seen such magic before.

"Hi, I'm Troy…" The kids started getting to know each other. "This is my buddy, Chad…"

"Hi," Chad was a good-looking African-American boy with a lot of hair. "You're a First-Year? We're First-Years too!" He looked as one of his sisters raced ahead. "My big brother is a prefect there. My sisters are Second-Years."

"You have a big family." Gabrielle lit up to meet other young wizards who were not her foster brothers or sisters. "I live with my cousins, but they attend Wiz-Tech…"

"What did I tell you about talking to boys?" Jerry turned to her then made a face to warn Troy and Chad.

"Sorry, Uncle Jerry." Gabrielle stopped talking as Troy and Chad stopped talking as well. Chad's other sister rushed through the mystical portal next as Chad followed behind.

"Your uncle's kind of strict." Troy whispered to her.

"Not really, just over protective…." Gabrielle beamed to her with a secret smile then gestured her to go next. She really liked his sense of chivalry. Clutching the handle of her luggage cart with Maddie riding on top, she charged forward expecting to hit the wall, but as the level of bricks moved over her, she found herself in a pocket of darkness and then sudden light on an entirely new platform. Instead of a modern steam locomotive, she saw an old-fashioned steam locomotive with a red chassis and gold cab with a gold stack and fixtures. On the cab where the train engineer stood, it was stenciled in bold black letters, "Hogwarts Express." It puffed pure white smoke and blew a loud pure whistle of air. There were a lot of other kids her age here pushing luggage carts with suitcases and cages with their animal familiars. One blonde girl walked ahead as her parents pushed her two carts of suitcases ahead of her brother pushing his own.

"Hey, come on…" Troy came through to join her on the train. Behind them, their parental guardians came through getting to know each other.

"So, you're part of the Wizard's Council…" Jerry met Michael Danforth, Chad's father. "I've never actually met anyone from the council."

"I'm actually a co-chair in the Office of Muggle Affairs." Michael confessed. "Tell me, what exactly is the role of a rubber duck?" Both Theresa, Chad's mother, Debbie Danforth, and Troy's mother, Monica Boyden, had to kiss and hug and embarrass their kids with all the other parents. The blonde girl with the huge volume of luggage just waved her mother off and boarded the train carrying her animal familiar represented by a nervous Chihuahua. Her twin brother meanwhile shrieked and bawled to be separated by his mother. Sporting a little red cap on his head, he took his pet frog, Spencer, and hesitantly boarded the train ahead of Chad. The blonde girl started to board, stopped a second to admire Zack and then climbed on board herself. The call came from Hagrid checking the kids on board the train, and Gabrielle was kissing her Aunt Theresa again for the last time with the young girl now on the train.

"Write me every day!!!" Theresa waved her niece goodbye as the train started moving. "I'll miss you so much!"

"Honey…" Jerry passed Gabrielle a small pocket purse of money. "If you get to Honeydukes near the school, buy me some of those exploding licorice pops. I haven't had any of those things since I was a kid!"

"Sure thing, Uncle Jerry!!!" The train lurched a bit, and Gabrielle was rushed by the conductor to find her private stateroom on the train. On the platform, Jerry felt a bit of accomplishment, but his wife was still crying and bawling her eyes out.

"You didn't cry this much when we saw Alex off to Wiz-Tech." He remarked.

"I know…" Theresa wiped her eyes of tears and blew her nose. "But I already know Alex won't write me!!!"

On the train, Gabrielle checked her ticket and counted the staterooms on the train. There were a lot of kids in Hogwarts uniforms like her uniform. Not all of them were First Years like her. She looked for Troy and Chad from the platform and traveled the length of the car looking for him until she found the compartment with the letters matching her ticket. She had one room all to herself. Two rows of seats to look out the window by herself, she looked around once and again up and down the hall trying to see Chad's hair to point the way toward Troy. They had to be somewhere. She tucked her uncle's money purse into a pocket of her skirt and sat down to catch her breath. The train was pulling forward at a good pace by now behind stores and markets and through crossings. Her first voyage by train, and Gabrielle didn't want to miss it. She watched as stores started giving way to houses and homes whirring past northward from London toward Hogwarts.

"Excuse me…" A girl appeared in her entryway with short brown hair, small thin glasses and First Year Uniform. "Some of the boys in my room are a bit rowdy. Can I sit with you?'

"Of course," Gabrielle welcomed her in sweetly and warmly. "I'm Gabrielle Russo."

"Kelsey…" The girl responded nervously. "Kelsey Nielsen." She looked round once and sat across from Gabrielle. "My mom's a witch, and my dad's a muggle. I'm not very good at this magic stuff."

"My parents were both wizards…" Gabrielle responded happy to have found another friend. "But I was raised by my uncle. He's retired, but my aunt is a muggle… In America, we call them mortals." She looked over to look closely at Kelsey's glasses. "You know, you've got a bit of a crack there. Let me get that for you…" Gabrielle reached inside her uniform and pulled out her brand-new Griffin feather wand. "_Occulus Repairo_!" She gestured and Kelsey's glasses sparkled a moment and started shining. Kelsey reacted with surprise. Once the sparkling stopped, she removed her old and worn glasses. They were new again! The silver was untarnished and the lenses were clear and shining.

"Wow!" Kelsey lit up with a smile very impressed. "I never heard of that spell." She returned her glasses.

"My Cousin Justin and I make up spells all the time." Gabrielle confessed freely. "He's at Wiz-Tech with my Cousin Alex."

"What's she like?"

"She's…." Gabrielle tried to think. "She's… she's… a piece of work!!"

"How'd you get that scar?" Kelsey noticed the mark on Gabrielle's forehead by chance.

"Alex did that to me." She confessed. "I was trying to fly, and she decided to use me as target practice."

"She just sounds horrible."

"Actually… she's my best friend… sometimes… part of the time… most of the time…" Gabrielle paused. "You know, the more I think about it… she's really mean to me!" They giggled together to be sharing stories. In the hall outside their compartment, things had settled down as the snack car stopped from room-to-room selling candy, drinks and junk food of mystical motif. It had chocolate frogs that came to life, soft drinks that changed color, potato chips that tasted like fruit and hard candy that exploded with flavor among so much more.

"Would you ladies like anything off the trolley?" The saleslady inquired.

"Those cherry tarts look good…" Kelsey pushed her hand into her pocket to check how much money she had. "I don't think I have enough.."

"Wait…" Gabrielle thought a moment. "We'll take a little of everything!" She reached into her pocket and pulled out a handful of gold coins, copper-colored crowns and silver doubloons. Kelsey grinned and rocked back a bit in her seat laughing just a little over her breath. Not loud enough to bother anyone, she was just having a lot of fun. In the corridor behind the snack cart, Troy and Chad were checking room to room. What happened to that cute girl he met on the platform? He knew she was here somewhere. He rapped on the next stateroom and pulled the door open.

"Excuse me…" Troy looked in. "Do you guys know anyone named Gabrielle?"

"Do you mind?" Hermione Granger stood up from her private talk with Harry Potter and Ron Weasley and spoke with a very rude British accent. "But we just have to be in the middle of something very important!!!" She jerked the hatch closed.

"Sorry!" Chad made a face and spoke very abruptly annoyed by her rudeness.

"Okay…" Troy popped Chad to the chest lightly as his friend to get his attention. "She was cute… but not cute enough!"

"Is it just me, or did that one guy with her look like Daniel Radcliffe?" Chad made a vague movie reference as Troy checked the next compartment. They moved on to the next door, rapped on it and slid the door a bit as Gabrielle and Kelsey looked up from enjoying the candy and fruit drinks.

"What did you do?" They recognized each other. "Start the party without us?"

"Troy!" Gabrielle grinned to see him again with a mouth full of cherry chocolate. "I was looking for you!" She grinned warmly again. "Oh… this is Kelsey…" They started introducing each other and sharing their life histories. Both of Troy's parents were Wizards. Chad's mother was a witch and his father was a Wizard along with his brother and sisters. Troy was an only child like Kelsey. They all liked each other and laughed together as the train started eventually reaching Nottinghamshire, the midway point for the Scottish border on their ten-hour train ride. By time they passed through the county, Gabrielle, Kelsey, Troy and Chad felt as if they had been friends their whole life.

"Excuse me," Someone else in a First Year Hogwarts uniform poked her head into the compartment. "But some kid named Ryan just lost a frog named Spencer. Has anyone seen a it?"

"I might have…" Chad hiccupped a bit after his third chocolate frog. "Ate it."

"Funny…" The attractive African-American girl responded barely amused and rolled her eyes. "Taylor McKessie…" She held her hand out to meet Gabrielle and Kelsey before the guys. "Can I join you guys? I just can't get any quiet reading time in my compartment."

"Sure…" Gabrielle invited another guest in glad to make more friends. "We're just showing each other spells. Troy, do that one you just did."

"All right…" Troy sat up straight in his seat and levitated one of the empty Bertie Blott's boxes from the end of his wand. "_Edifice transformus_!" The wrapper started crunching up by itself, transforming and folding itself into a tiny white cardboard model castle that dropped into his other hand. The first one he had given to Gabrielle, this one he gave to Kelsey.

"That's really good!" Taylor was impressed. "How about this one?" She reacted solemnly and looked to Chad from the length of her wand, passing her hand over his head and making a little mischievous smile. "_Glamour Follicula_!" She chanted and turned Chad's brown hair a bright shade of red as the gang started laughing.

"What?" Chad didn't get the joke. "What?" He saw his refection in the dark part of the window as they passed through a grove of trees. "My hair!!! You turned me into Carrot Top!!!"

"It looks really good, buddy!" Troy was laughing the loudest.

"Really funny…" Chad glared at Taylor giggling at him. "Change it back!"

"Don't worry…" Taylor smirked as the laughing died down. "It'll wear off… in a hour… or three…"

"An hour???" Chad rolled his eyes and punched Troy harmlessly for laughing. "Or three???" Parts of it were already fading away.

"Did I say an hour…" Taylor corrected herself. "I mean a minute… or three…" She snickered again and joined the gathering as she tried one of the jellybeans from Bertie Blott's. Each one was a different flavor ranging from the hundreds. They ranged from mint to licorice and were as diverse enough to include liver, spinach, eggplant and tripe as well the truly offensive such as vomit, earwax and baby diaper. Taylor tried a green one expecting it to be safe.

"Ugh…" She spit it into the wrapper. "Old sock." She described the taste as Gabrielle and the others started laughing together again. The noise was too much for the students in the next compartment. One of them came over to complain about the noise.

"Can you please keep down the noise?!!!" Hermione Granger pulled their door open and scolded them. A roll of her eyes and the five First Years drew silent as the little diva rolled their door shut and returned to her friends. Gabrielle looked round to her new group of friends.

"She's just jealous that we're more popular." Troy mentioned out loud to stave off the anxiety.


	3. Chapter 3

3

Lunch on the train was between roast beef sandwiches with mashed potatoes or baked fish on a bed of rice. It was rumored some girl on board insisted on lobster for her and her twin brother. What candy Gabrielle and her friends did not eat they had divvied up between them. It was Kelsey who first saw the shadow of Hogwarts in the distance from Hogsmeade, the nearest town to the school. The town was populated by both magic-folk and by regular people used to magic. It was so remote that travelers rarely turned up here. Ready for real food, the herds of children were taken off the train by status. Anyone who was a second year or up traveled by road around the lake and to the castle, but by tradition, the First Years traveled down a path to the lake where they were ferried across eight to a boat. Gabrielle and her friends arrived in one boat to reach the castle behind the older students used to the routine in school. Troy and Chad looked for the creature supposed to be in the lake, and Taylor showed Gabrielle the stars. The lake was as clear as a mirror; their boats floating oarless without a breeze like leaves in the wind under a starry night partially blocked out by the huge shadow of Hogwarts ablaze with lights and exterior bonfires lighting the way. Gabrielle dropped her mouth open stunned by the size of the location and looked to Kelsey astounded by the presence of the ancient school. Troy and Chad arched their heads up to look at it. Their boats drifting toward the castle under their own power, the bonds of friendship were already forged, and by time they reached the docks under the castle, they were ready to start their respective adventures. The school looked to be the size of a mountain with countless windows and illuminated windows. They approached one of the closest houses from the lake, ascending the stairs up to the castle fifty feet above them on the cliff and entering through an archway lead by Hagrid guiding the forty students behind him. He sent them up one staircase and stayed behind. Troy and Gabrielle were leading the way to the top with the blonde from the London Train Station with them. They crossed a balcony to a set of doors where there stood a tall proud woman in a witch's hat. She had been attractive in her youth, but time had made her mature and emboldened. Embraced by wisdom, headmistress Minerva McGonagal looked over the new group of First Years gathering before her and coming to a stop.

"Welcome to Hogwarts…" She spoke in a stern motherly voice like than of a grandmother with many children. "Now, through these doors you will pass into the meeting hall where you will join your classmates and be sorted into your houses. The houses here are Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff and Slitherin. While you are here, you house is like your family. Your triumphants will earn you points, any rule-breaking and you will lose points. At the end of the school year, the house with the most points will win the house cup… "

"Spencer!!!" Ryan Evans just casually looked around and noticed his pet frog sitting at the top step. His twin sister looked away and covered her face with her hand out of embarrassment. Ryan collected Spenser in his hands and looked to Professor McGonagal. She was taken a bit aback herself, but then, kids did lose pets from time to time. She recomposed herself.

"The sorting ceremony will commence momentarily." She mentioned and gestured for the kids to wait then stepped away as the kids were watched over by Argus Filtch, the school caretaker. He was a small thin sour little man holding a cat in on his arm and stroking it behind the head. It did not look like he liked kids, but the feeling was mutual. No one liked the look of him either. The kids all mulled around impatiently on the stairs waiting to keep going. A few tried to get off the second landing and stand on the steps to the next landing. They mumbled amongst themselves or looked around the impossibly high ceiling suspended over their heads or looked down quite dizzy to the first floor twenty feet below the staircase. One student feared the weight of kids might cause the marble staircase to collapse.

"Hi, Troy!!!" The perky blonde pulled Taylor back to get ahead of her. "Missed you at daddy's cotillion, but you should have seen me in my white dress. I looked stunning!"

"Sorry I missed it…" Troy reacted with trepidation. He didn't hate Sharpay, but she made his stomach tie in knots. "But Chad and I were skiing in the Himalayas…" He looked to Gabrielle. "Gabrielle, this is Sharpay. Sharpay, Gabrielle."

"Hi…" Gabrielle smiled with all of the innocence of a small town girl.

"Charmed, I'm sure…" Sharpay looked back to her blonde and red-haired friends. "This is Lily…" She gestured to the redhead. "And this is Tawni…" She gestured to the blonde behind her.

"A-hem…" Ryan rolled his eyes.

"And that's my idiot brother…"

Ryan bounced his head disgustedly that she just barely knew his name.

"Around here…" Sharpay continued speaking to Gabrielle. "There are different types of people here, and I can help you a lot with that here. It's very important that you hang out with the right people. Stick with me and I can show you the wrong type of people not to be with here." She reached out to shake Gabrielle's hand, but the cute brunette Waverly Place ingénue just gasped, looked to Taylor and Kelsey then back to Troy. He looked as if he was worried for her sake.

"I think I can tell the wrong sort myself, thank you." She responded as Sharpay reacted stunned. The doors to the meeting hall now shuddered and creaked open from the inside as everyone looked up. Troy grinned to Gabrielle and led the way for her as Sharpay reacted taken aback by Gabrielle's response, but she had little time to react to the snubbing. From inside the meeting hall, Professor McGonagal beckoned for the students to enter between the two middle tables. As the First Years entered, they entered into a room even larger than the first. Four long tables over forty chairs long filled the room beneath a grand hall with a higher stage area for the teachers and faculty area. Illuminated by both perched and levitating candles, the room expressed the enormity of the castle. The almost two hundred older students watched as the forty new students entered to be arranged into four houses at Hogwarts, five girls and five new boys for each house marching up the middle of the hall between the Gryffindor and Ravenclaw tables. Slitherin was to the left under the windows; Hufflepuff to the other wall near a large ten-foot high fireplace. Three stories above, Gabrielle saw open starry skies with clouds and a full moon with random ghosts and spirits flitting over and around the rafters obscured by the sky.

"It's enchanted to look like the sky." Taylor explained to Gabrielle. "I read about it in _Hogwarts: A History_."

"First Years, over here…" Professor McGonagal stood on the bottom steps to the teacher's table. Gabrielle looked up and noticed Hagrid sitting among them. On the bottom level near Professor McGonagal was a short wooden stool with a very old and withered cap falling in on itself atop. She guided the kids to a stop before her. "Now, as I call your name, step forward, take the seat and I will place the hat to your head to choose your house…" She looked at the list with in her right hand and lifted the hat with her left. "Michael Adams…" She called, and a short young man, lean in build with small brown eyes and a bowl-type haircut slowly emerged from the back of the crowd behind Troy and Chad. He looked nervous at first, a slight grin building to his face then advanced on the stool and sat down with a deep breath as McGonagal placed the Sorting Hat upon his head.

"It burns!!! It burns!!!" He started screaming as if the hat was killing him. The other First-Years reacted in terror and much of the room laughed, but Professor McGonagal was not amused. She jerked the Sorting Hat back up with a stern look as Michael looked up with a laughing, grinning face at his own practical joke.

"Mr. Adams…" She responded. "I love a good joke as well as the next person, but if you ever pull a stunt like that in front of me, you will be the first student in the History of Hogwarts to be expelled before he is admitted." She tried again with the Sorting Hat as it finally rested a second on Michael's head and had the time to create a face. The creases formed into eyes that blinked and thought and a mouth called forth from the hat itself.

"Hmmm…" A gravely voice came from it. "Another year has woken me up and new First Years have arrived, but what to do with this irritating little jester? Which house should it be? I can only think of only but… Hufflepuff!!!"

Hufflepuff house screamed excitedly at their new member as the process began, and Michael calmed down to join his house and meet new friends.

"Amanda Agee…" Professor McGonagal called next as a lovely redhead came strolling forward next from the back. The hat placed her in Ravenclaw, and from there, the names continued on alphabetically. Terry Ahern, Kelly Aiken, Valerie Birckhead, Susan Bones and then…

"Troy Boyden…" McGonagal called and Troy reacted nervously with a look to Gabrielle and Chad. Sharpay looked over her shoulder to him then to her twin brother. The hat was placed to his head.

"Hmmmm…" The hat read his character. "An American boy! I don't get to read many American wizards, but you're strong and bold as were your colonial ancestors, I say, Gryffindor!!!" It called out almost immediately.

Gryffindor House cheered to welcome their third new member. Troy grinned ear-to-ear and went to join the friends he'd have for the next few years. Behind him, a redhead named Chelsea Daniels also joined the house and then Chad himself.

"What?" The hat reacted. "Ha! Another Danforth?! Well, I know exactly what to do with you! Gryffindor!!!" Gryffindor House erupted with cheers. It was almost fate. They were friends on the train and now they were friends in the same house. Two more names and Ryan Evans got Hufflepuff and then Sharpay advanced before her name was even called. Professor McGonagal rolled her eyes at this girl's ego and placed the sorting hat to her head.

"Slitherin!!!" It cried out.

The students at the Slitherin House table cried out excited.

"Wait a second!" Sharpay reacted upset and turned to Professor McGonagal. "Miss McGonagal, I'm afraid there's been a little mistake. I'm sure I was supposed to join Troy in Gryffindor."

"No, Miss Evans…" Professor McGonagal saw through this girl's intentions. "There's no mistake. Please join your house." Sharpay made a face and pouted as she joined her new house with deep apprehension. Separated from her brother and from Troy, all she could do was hope that Gabrielle did not end up in Gryffindor.

"I might have known…" Taylor whispered to Gabrielle and Taylor. "There is not a witch or wizard in Slitherin who did not turn bad… or got herself pregnant before graduating." The three of them giggled in hushed tones as McGonagal continued calling names. There were still twenty-six kids ahead and Gryffindor and Ravenclaw were filling up fast. Another girl with Gothic dark hair came in next to Sharpay, Lily and Tawni at the Slitherin Table. Taylor McKessie ended up in Ravenclaw and two people later, Kelsey Nielsen took her place at the Hufflepuff Table. Ten more, and another name was called to break the tension.

"Gabrielle Russo." Professor McGonagal called.

One of the last of the nine students waiting to be called, Gabrielle looked to Hagrid at the big table looking down and encouraging her. He nodded a bit as Gabrielle strolled forward as the thirty-one previous First-Years before her. Her eyes looked to Troy and Chad at the Gryffindor table ready to join them at their table or Kelsey and Ryan in Hufflepuff House or Taylor in Ravenclaw House. Fearing she could join Sharpay in Slitherin, she began nervously fretting and praying as the Sorting Hat was placed to her head.

"Hmmm… hmmm…." The hat tried reading her and prolonging the tension. "Where should this one go? Could it be Hufflepuff? Slitherin?"

Gabrielle started worrying even more. Ravenclaw had one empty seat. Griffindor two seats left. Both Hufflepuff and Slitherin had three seats left.

"I know!" The Hat realized the truth. "Gryffindor!!!" It called out and Gabrielle squealed with delight! The Gryffindor Table roared excitedly as Professor McGonagal called James Saddle for Slitherin house. Gabrielle excitedly rushed over to join her house. Behind her, Saddle joined Sharpay in Slitherin and Jeanne Sagal was called to join Hufflepuff. Young William Samms from London was called to take the last chair in Gryffindor. As the last chairs were filled, Sharpay looked and watched as Gabrielle became friends with Troy… and began plotting. Amidst the reverie, Professor McGonagal took her seat behind the great table between Albus Dumbledore, the schoolmaster, and Hagrid himself. She tapped her crystal goblet with a ringing noise to get the room's attention.

"Attention…" She called. "A few announcements…." She sat as Professor Dumbledore rose. He could have been the Great Merlin or legendary Vainamoinen himself. He had a long white beard down to his belt and a light blue robe with white cuffs and matching sorcerer's cap folded backward, and as he rose, he slightly tilted his head and looked up to the ghosts watching the room before addressing his students.

"First Years, a few start of term notices…" He spoke. "The Dark Forest remains forbidden to all students, and Mr. Filtch has asked me to remind you all that the third floor hall on the right side is out of bounds… unless you want to suffer a violent and very powerful death."

"Like Lindsay Lohan's acting career." Chad whispered to Troy. His buddy tried stifling his laughter.

"Or Tiger Woods' marriage…" Taylor turned and spoke to her friends at the Gryffindor Table. Everyone in between cracked up a bit from the jokes. Hagrid must have heard the jokes as well because he choked back a bit of laughter. Miss McGonagal must have psychically eavesdropped a bit as well because she looked to Troy's posse of friends with a stern look.

"And now…" Dumbledore swayed his hands to summon the food. "Let the feast begin." Endless bowls and platters of food now appeared from out of the air at the tables. It was as if they were hidden behind a veil of invisibility just lifted. The older kids immediately started filling their plates, but the younger students marveled at the spell. Wonderful vegetables, cooked ham, roasted chicken, sweet yams, whole pies of every sort and sliced five-layer cakes tempted the eyes and the tastes of the students. The platters of apples and pears might have just well been decorations because no one ate any of them except a few prefects who sliced them into edible pieces. Gabrielle took just a small slice of ham, and Taylor delicately chose a few pieces of chicken. Troy and Chad were across from each other filling up on pork chops and mashed potatoes. As Gabrielle sipped the fine sweet taste of juice from her goblet, she looked through the faces toward Sharpay… looking back at her with an annoyed little grin at her and mentally chiding her by jostling her head at her.


	4. Chapter 4

4

Gabrielle was easily overwhelmed her first day after studying her student schedule and the handbook to the layout of the castle. Although her Uncle Jerry had trained and prepared her well and her Cousin Justin had both devoutly studied their spells, she was not prepared for the sudden responsibility thrust upon her. She had a six-class schedule in addition to hour lunchtime and an hour quiet study time in either the library or the assembly hall. The classes were not that bad, but the teachers were unpredictable. When two young boys were late to Miss McGonagal's Spell's and Hexes Class, she thought she was very nearly going to toss them out, but at the last second… she just warned them and sent to their seats. Professor Snape was most frightening. He charged the room closing the windows to sunlight in his old dark pilgrim period garb and immediately set the rules for his Potions Class then confronting a young student in glasses and making him an example to the others. It was Professor Lupin's Defense Against The Dark Arts class just before lunch that she liked the most. He brought in the most interesting artifacts from his adventures and told the best stories about the creatures he had battled in his career from American Vampires to Zombies in Haiti. After class, Gabrielle and Troy headed onward to lunch with their friends. A thirty-minute break to catch her breath, Gabrielle joined Kelsey to head back to the Commons Room for private study.

"Eye of rabbit and harp string hum…" Ryan Evans was seated at the Hufflepuff Table across from Troy and Chad. "Turn this water into rum." He tasted his water. It was still not rum. Troy and Chad just kept watching him and trying to encourage him.

"Keep trying, buddy…" Standing up, Chad patted both of Ryan's shoulders.

"Thanks…" Ryan looked up as Gabrielle and Kelsey joined Troy and Chad at the table. They looked to Ryan and took their seats wondering where Taylor was. She was probably in the library.

"How are you guys doing?" Gabrielle sat with her books and notebooks.

"Well, I've gotten lost in the castle about three times…" Chad spoke up. "And misplaced Walter twice…"

"How do you lose a turtle?" Kelsey asked.

"He's faster than he looks." Chad answered. "I think I'm going to have to put a bell around his neck." Walter was Chad's familiar. Usually perched on Gabrielle's shoulder, Maddie either was in the owlry or maybe in her cage back in the hall. Kelsey's white rat, Mimi, was usually curled up in her backpack when she was not climbing over her shoulders. Troy had an owl like Gabrielle, but his was a much larger barn owl named Horace. All of their pets were at the risk of Taylor's cat, Emma, a sleek golden Siamese cat with bright blue eyes. As Gabrielle thought of Maddie with the other owls, she looked up and saw one enter through the windows of the roof and then another and then another. Eventually there were several owls and they were all dropping mail or packages. It was postal delivery at Hogwarts… their first one. Chad got one from his parents and a small parachute came from a package dropped to Kelsey. Troy got a letter from his Aunt Carolyn and Maddie swooped in delivering a letter right into Gabrielle's happily waiting hands. The dropping letters and packages continued only a minute more and then gradually abated as owls searched for their owners in the castle.

"My mom is excited that I got into Gryffindor." Troy read his letter. "She says my dad would have been so proud."

"Mine too." Chad read his letter. "I've got a little sister who will be coming here next year, and my mom is hoping she'll make Gryffindor too." He noticed Kelsey pulling her box open. "What did you get?"

"It's my mom's Remembrall." Kelsey grinned a bit. "She said she'd send it after I got into Hogwarts. It turns red whenever I've forgotten something." She looked at it, but in her hand it was instead turning a bright blue.

"What's blue mean?" Gabrielle looked up from her letter.

"It means I'm embarrassed." Kelsey blushed a bit. "Green means I'm being secretive… I couldn't get away with anything at home."

"Gabrielle…" Troy leaned over the table. "What's your letter say?"

"Well," The cute brunette smiled a bit. "My Uncle Jerry goes on and on about my aunt missing me and my Cousin Max being obnoxious. My Cousin Justin just made the Quidditch Team at Wiz-Tech so if they make the tournaments he'll try to say hello when they come to play Hogwarts. He also says my Cousin Alex is getting in trouble a lot at Wiz-Tech as if she was trying to get expelled." She sighed a bit. "I don't think she's going to make it as a Wizard."

"Just so long as she isn't here." Chad shook his had in disbelief. "And I thought my sisters were bad…"

"Chad…" The sisters in question came strolling into the Common Room. Both attired in their Hogwarts school uniforms and stunningly attractive, Jessica and Jerrica Danforth came into the grand chamber to confront their brother. "We're going into Hogsmeade… with our class."

"With our class…" Jessica echoed. "Do you want anything?" She finished for Jerrica.

"How about some Anti-Sister Repellent?" He asked.

"When do we get to go?" Kelsey asked.

"First Years don't get to go until they are Second Years." Jerrica answered. "Any requests?"

"Excuse me…" Gabrielle looked up. "My uncle said he would like some exploding licorice pops from Honeydukes. I'll gladly pay you back."

"It's on us, sweetie…" Jessica smiled to her brother's friend.

"We'll bring you all some goodies." Jerrica shined to Jerrica and looked back. "Oh, and Chad… Here's your Wizards Monthly."

"Please tell me you did not do the sudoku…" Chad sounded annoyed as Troy read over his shoulder. His sisters turned and headed out quickly as Chad checked his weekly magazine. "Please tell you did not do the… They did the sudoku. Tell me they're not doing it to annoy me!"

"Look at this…" Troy was always interested in stories that caught his interest. "It says here that Gringotts was broken into by someone pretending to be a Dementor." He showed the article. It had a wizard photo with the figures moving back and forth and around as if it were a muggle hologram card.

"Isn't Gringotts supposed to be impenetrable?" Kelsey placed her Remembrall into her pack.

"Only one chamber was broken into…" Chad read. "Whoever it was went straight to Vault 136 and broke it open… however, that vault had already been emptied otherwise security would have been tighter."

"136?" Gabrielle thought that number sounded familiar. "I think I was near it when I went to Gringotts. Hagrid took something out of it. He said it was Hogwarts business."

"He took it out just in the nick of time." Kelsey paused from studying her spells and hexes. "Almost as if someone predicted the robbery…"

"I wonder what was in it." Troy wondered as at the next table Ryan attempted his spell one more time. For some reason, none of his spells were working. Instead of casting his spells, he summoning a lot of energy from incanting the same spell over and over until it finally burst, destroying the object he was working on before him. His cup of water exploded in his face.

"I'm not getting any better at this." He opined in class after study period. After his private study time, he had Professor Flitwick's levitation class with Gabrielle. Troy was off to his Defense Against The Dark Arts class, and Gabrielle sat next to him. Flitwick was a short white-haired teacher who taught while standing atop a short stool to see all of his students. Reportedly the son of both muggle and faerie parents, he'd been teaching levitation at Hogwarts for almost fifty years.

"Levitation is one of the most basic spells a Wizard has." He spoke in a high-pitched quirky voice. "Now, take your wands and do a simple just basic swish and flip and say Wingardium Leviosa."

"_Wingardium Leviosa_!" His pupils started incanting. "_Wingardium Leviosa_!"

"Gentler… gentler…"

"Wingardium Leviosa!" Ryan sat next to Gabrielle trying to rouse his feather to move. "Wingardium Leviosa!"

"I think you're badly distracted." She spoke to him to try and help him. "Is there something bothering you?"

"Yeah…" Ryan confessed to her. "My sister and I go through pre-magic training together our whole lives and we only get one class together, and when we're not in class, she hanging around with those other girls…" He looked to her. "I don't have any friends here."

"My friend, Kelsey, is in your house." Gabrielle revealed. "I'm sure she'd talk to you if you tried, and I'll talk to you."

"Really…" Ryan lit up a bit more relaxed as he looked to her. "I think I feel a bit better now." He tried levitating the goose feather again. "Wingardium Leviosa!"

"Wingardium Leviosa!" Chad was next to him trying to levitate his feather too.

"Wingardium Leviosa!" Ryan tried to get his feather levitated first.

"Wingardium Leviosa!" Chad could not let Ryan levitate his feather before him. He wasn't even swishing his wand. He was batting it as if he was trying to kill the feather.

"Stop it. Stop it." Taylor stopped his swinging. "This isn't baseball. You're going to put somebody's eye out." Chad stopped and looked annoyed at her.

"And besides…" Taylor continued. "It's Wingardium Levio-SAA, not Wingardium Levio-SAH." She lightly and very ladylike cleared her throat to show him. "_Wingardium Leviosa_!" She swished her wand lightly to the feather and it alighted lightly, seemingly catching an existing wind as it rose and wafted, rocking lightly to and fro like a tiny ship buffeted by invisible waves. She looked to Chad with a little smile as if she was better than him. All Chad could do was stare disgustedly at it with his head held up in his hand, but Professor Flitwick didn't see that. His little elfin face lit up with delight as Taylor continued controlling the feather. It was rising even higher that Gabrielle's.

"Well done, Miss McKessie!!!" Professor Flitwick applauded her. "Five points to Ravenclaw!!" He was then suddenly knocked off his stool by a light explosion near him. His startled face looked over to the other table where Ryan Evans sat in terrified shock, his face awash and tinged with black pieces of feather and his blonde hair even singed just a bit. Even Gabrielle sat in shock upon seeing that burst of light.

"Professor…" She looked up with a light grin. "I think we have a defective feather over here."


	5. Chapter 5

5

After a few weeks, Ryan was getting better in class and making friends like William Samms in Gryffindor and Terry Ahern from Ravenclaw. He was also a bit sweet on Kelsey. Apparently he saw someone cute and special under those glasses. His third class for the day was Broom Riding with Madame Hooch, a stern but nearly attractive woman with spiked blonde hair like feathers and brown eyes like the eyes of an eagle. For the first month, class learned the aerodynamic properties of broom riding from the textbooks. Most witches and wizards flew on brooms, but they could fly on anything long and maneuverable like a rod, pestle or even a broken flagpole. However, brooms were traditional flying devices for magicians since medieval times. On the first clear day in October, Madame Hooch took the class outside for a first day of flying on the school grounds. Class was almost entirely female. Ryan and William were two of the five boys with seven girls. Gabrielle, Kelsey and Sharpay with Tawni and Lily took the grounds ahead of them and lined in two roles with the twelve kids in two roles of six facing each other.

"Good morning, class…" Madame Hooch walked through them.

"Good morning, Madame Hooch…" Class spoke in unison.

"Welcome to your first flying lesson.." She fretted with her gloves then took her stance. "Well, what are you waiting for, step up on the left side of your broomstick…" Her students mulled a bit and took their places. "Stick your right hand over the broom and with a firm voice, say 'Up!'"

"Up!" Gabrielle's broom jumped up immediately to her hand to her surprise. Among the others trying to take control of their brooms, Sharpay looked over jealous and started screaming at hers as if it was her brother. Meanwhile, Ryan's broom just bobbed and dropped, and Kelsey's rose just far enough and dropped. William's own broom punched him in the chin.

"Up?" Kelsey questioned hers as if it was a dog then tried again. "Up!"

"With feeling!" Madame Hooch went around telling them to change their tones or not sound so angry. Gabrielle put hers down and got it to jump up again for her. Kelsey's broom finally jumped into her hand and Sharpay and Lily got their brooms to come to them in unison. Ryan finally got his to obey. William's broom jumped past his hand and he grabbed it out of the air than lose it.

"Now…" Their teacher now stood at the other end of her class. "Once you have got a hold of your broom, I want you to mount it and grip it tightly… You don't want to be slipping off the end." Gabrielle looked up briefly with a toss of her hair as she pretended to be riding her broom. Sharpay was trying to find the most ladylike way to ride hers. Ryan and Kelsey shared a secret look at each other as William fumbled about on his trying to get used to it.

"When, I blow my whistle…" Madame Hooch continued. "I want each of you to kick off the ground hard, keeping your broom steady, and lean forward slowly… hovering briefly and then touching down…" William was struggling with his broom. It was probably too old and sensing his apprehension and fear. Gabrielle watched him struggling as he started bobbing higher and higher. Ryan reacted to his best friend besieged by his magic attempt. The others started chuckling or moving away from him.

"Mister Samms, control your broom…" Madame Hooch ordered him. "Mister Samms!!!"

"What's wrong with this…" His broom was taking flight!!! "Crazy thing!!" Before he knew it, he was soaring higher and higher and gripping the handle so hard his fingers were turning white. Madame Hooch was screaming at him to stop, but he had no idea what was going on or if he was even doing it. All he knew was that he did not want to fall! The broom was dipping up heading up and up and higher still… and then, grabbing the handle around his arms and hugged it as it dove to Earth and dive-bombed his classmates, but by then he was hanging for dear life to the broom taking him on a ride. Ryan tried to help William by grabbing him as he sailed by, but he got clipped across the shoulders by the attempt and knocked to his feet. Gabrielle pulled Kelsey out of the way as William shot past out of control. He should have let go when he was close to the ground, but before he knew it, he was soaring straight up, his broom bouncing against the front wall of the castle, trying to get through it or knock him off. Madame Hooch was yelling instructions, but he couldn't hear her. He was too terrified. He shot up again, around a spire and tried pushing downward as he grazed across the copper statue up top. His classmates started screaming. They thought he'd been impaled, but his broom soared away and landed halfway to Hagrid's hut. Meanwhile, William's school uniform tore and he hung by his coat tails twelve stories above. His classmates crowded beneath him fearing his fall… They watched him scrambling to grab the statue up top, but one movement too far and he ripped out of his school jacket and started plummeting to the sounds of screams.

"_Velocitus impedatus_!!!" Gabrielle's wand jumped to her hand and she slowed his ascent toward the ground. He was falling to his death one minute, and then reducing in speed and coming to a stop just a foot over the grass at the base of the school. Madame Hooch was first to get to him. He was shaking in shock from his tumultuous ride.

"Will, you all right?" Ryan helped him up.

"Fast thinking, Miss. Russo…" Madame Hooch took charge of things. "Five points Griffindor for your fast thinking. Everyone else is to keep their feet on the ground as I take Mr. Samms and Mr. Evans to the hospital wing…" She placed her cloak around William to keep him calm. "If I see as much as one broom in the air," She was looking at Sharpay and her friends. "The one riding it will be tossed out of Hogwarts faster that you say Quidditch!" She took the two boys with her toward the archway into the north courtyard of the grounds. Without her, her classmates started getting distracted and mulling around already bored. Sharpay looked around and noticed something in the grass from when William plowed through them. She found Kelsey's Remembrall on the ground.

"Oh, Sharpay…" Kelsey reached to take it back. "That's mine. Can I have it back?"

"Yours?" Sharpay pulled it away. "You don't do a good job holding on to it, did you?" Lily and Tawni looked at each other as Sharpay had her moment.

"Sharpay…" Gabrielle came round to her. "It is hers. I was there when she got it."

"Please, Sharpay, it belonged to my mother." Kelsey implored the spoiled princess.

"Really?" Sharpay was mocking her with it. "Maybe you'd like to come after it…" She took her broom and started levitating off the ground.

"Sharpay!!" Gabrielle looked back for Madame Hooch's return. "We're not supposed to be flying!"

"If you're going to follow the rules your whole life…" Sharpay looked at her. "You will never get anywhere!" The blonde one just cackled a bit, mocking her ethics of not breaking the rules, and clenched her broom tightly to ascend the air. Gabrielle scowled a bit and found her nerve. Sharpay had a lot of Alex in her; they both could push her buttons. She took her broom and jumped off the ground before her classmates to take after Sharpay, her eyes narrowing against the breeze to her face, following the trail to Hogsmeade then stopping two hundred feet above the Dark Forest.

"Give it back, Sharpay!!!" The young ingénue proved she could be fierce.

"Catch me if you can!!!" Sharpay giggled and soared toward the lake into a big circle trying to reach the ground before Gabrielle could. She sped over her classmates on the front grounds and slowed to a stop that she might use one hand to toss Kelsey's Remembrall against the school and shatter it, but Gabrielle sped up and shot past Sharpay as fast as she could. From inside the school, Professor Dumbledore and Miss McGonagal noticed the tail end of the strife with Gabrielle catching the ball.

"Any openings in Gryffindor's Quidditch Team for a flier like that?" Dumbledore asked.

"Not a one…" Miss McGonagal lamented, but she was sure wherever Madame Hooch was, she'd deal with the two girls.

"How mad was Madame Hooch when she heard you and Sharpay were flying?" Troy was asking Gabrielle forty minutes after Flying Class ended.

"Pretty mad…" Gabrielle carried her books from her History of Magic class to head to the Gryffindor Common Room. "But I had about seven witnesses backing me to confirm Sharpay started the whole thing." They were coming up on the tower room with the portraits and staircases. "We both lost twenty points from both our houses, but at least Kelsey got her Remembrall back."

"That Sharpay…" Chad was annoyed just thinking about her then changed the subject. "So, where did you get that spell that saved William?"

"That's another spell Justin gave me…" Gabrielle looked back at him as they approached the steps to their hall. "I tend to fall off the balcony at home a lot whenever Alex and I are looking at the stars."

"Fall off?" Troy looked to Chad and back to Gabrielle wondering if she was blind to how mean her Cousin Alex was to her. "Gabrielle, don't you think that Alex might be pushing you off? I've known you only a few weeks, and… well, you don't seem as accident-prone here as you think you are at home."

"I don't think Alex would do that to me…" She neared their hallway as the staircase groaned and swung away from the wall to hook on to another balcony. These stairs were always changing. Chad's older brother, Tad, had warned them about it their first day, and they had seen it happen several times, but this was their first time to actually ride one across the width of the room. Troy held on to the railing, and Gabrielle held on to him. Chad looked around stunned as they rode across the swinging stairs to a new floor sliding out from an existing balcony and a railing from the wall. As soon as the top lodged firmly to the new door, Gabrielle raced ahead with Troy reaching the door for her. Chad jumped over to join them as they rushed into a darkened hall. They traveled a few feet and realized no one had been in this section of the castle in years. The statues were covered in dust and layers of spider webs. A lost mouse scurried along the length of the wall.

"Troy…" Gabrielle looked back. "I think this is the third floor corridor… we're not supposed to be in here."

"I forgot about that." Troy looked to Chad and back to her. "We can get downstairs down here…" They heard one of the spirits in the castle and stopped. From the other direction, they heard more solid voices and realized they were from real people coming up from the second floor. Troy made a face toward Gabrielle's shadow and grabbed Chad by the sleeve as they rushed to get out of sight. The door to the stairway was locked.

"It's locked!" He was scared they were going to get caught.

"_Alohomora_!" Gabrielle zapped it with her wand and the door popped open a crack. They pushed their way in and closed the door behind them, pressing against the other side as they hid. Troy parted the door just a bit to watched out for Snape or Filtch. From in the room, they heard a dull groan, the rattling of chains and the sound of something immense stirring. As his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, Chad noticed something like pillars moving then arched his head up toward what they were supporting. They were not pillars, they were legs of a huge dull gray dog with three heads and six eyes staring at him, each of them with a mouth large enough to swallow them each! Gabrielle saw it next and Troy looked up next as they started screaming.

Preferring not to be eaten, Troy pulled the door open wide and rushed out then slammed it shut behind Gabrielle and Chad. They tried closing the door, but the animal's middle head was pushing against it. Chad helped him to get the door closed, pushing and shoving; Gabrielle lent her weight as well once she started breathing again. First they got lost in this part of the castle, and now they nearly let this monster loose. The three-headed creature pushed against them to get to them, and they pushed hard back in unison as the door finally latched. They had the door shut, but the great brute was not happy to be tempted and then denied a meal of three young students. It growled and rattled at the door for at least five minutes before it calmed down and once again relaxed, allowing the three First-Years to escape the third floor corridor and the rest of its secrets. Racing to the first floor, they rushed to take the long way to their common room covered in the gray dust and cobwebs of the third floor corridor.

"Why are they keeping something like that locked up in a school?" Chad rushed forward into the main floor gallery first as Troy braced on the wall to catch his breath. Gabrielle daintily held her own hand to her chest as she tried to catch her own breath. "I mean…" Chad continued. "Something like that doesn't deserve it's own wing, it deserves its own castle!"

"You didn't look very closely, did you?" Gabrielle took a deep breath and relaxed, turning round in her Hogwarts school uniform to Troy and Chad. "Did you see what it was laying on when we broke in?"

"Gabrielle," Troy gasped for breath once more and lead the way through the main floor hall of portraits for the hidden entrance to the staircase up to their common room. "We weren't exactly looking at its feet!"

"It was standing on a trap door…" She looked round as Troy said the password to the Fat Lady in the portrait and got access to their secret passageway. "That means it's there for a reason to guard something…" She thought back. "Why I bet it's guarding whatever Hagrid removed from Gringotts?! Remember, Kelsey said it was almost as if someone knew it was about to be stolen."

"She does have a point." Troy responded as they reached their common room.

"Yeah, but who would be stupid enough to try and get past that thing to get whatever it is?" Chad reacted to their conversation. "I mean… it can't possibility be worth losing these kind of looks over!" He pointed at his own face, scoffed under his breath and headed up to the rooms.

"He's really got to get his priorities straightened out…" Gabrielle announced to Chad.


	6. Chapter 6

6

Two months into school and both Gabrielle and Kelsey got to watch their first Quidditch Match even if it was both their own houses against each other. Both Troy and Chad were looking forward to joining the Gryffindor team when they became Second-Years. Halloween was also coming up, and the ghosts in Hogwarts were getting excited and noticed a lot more often. Pumpkins decorated much of the castle, many of the Gryffindor boys were pranking each other with practical jokes from Zonko's Joke Shop in town. Gabrielle was seeing just a bit less of Troy between classes, but she still had four out of six classes with him. They got to sit next to each other in Professor Lupin's Defense Against the Dark Arts class, but Troy was still leaning forward a lot and taking to Chad a bit more often in front of them.

"Okay, class…" Lupin dressed with his school robe over his tweed sweater, brown tie and brown pants. "Would anyone care to guess just what is inside here?" He glided over to a closed wardrobe closet, a large round armoire with mirrors on it and hooks for hanging clothes on. It rattled and shook from its hesitant tenant. The class was not sitting at their desks today; they had been pushed to the sides of the room except for the wardrobe closet up front. Kelsey stuck her hand up.

"It sounds like a poltergeist." She spoke up and looked around the room. "But in Western Europe, I believe they are called boggarts." She looked around nervously. "My uncle had one in Canada."

"Very good, Miss Nielsen…" Professor Lupin congratulated her with a light grin and looked among the others. "Now, can anyone tell me just what a boggart A-K-A poltergeist looks like?"

"Well, no one really knows…" Taylor was right by him at the front of the class. "Boggarts are shape-shifters… They tend to take the form of whatever object that person fears the most. That's what makes them so…"

"Terrifying…" Lupin spoke delightfully creepy and with a bit a glimmer in his eye in mood with the Halloween season. Several of the kids liked his sense of humor, but Sharpay, Lily and Tawni rolled their eyes as if they were bored. Lupin then turned professional again. "Luckily, a very simple spell exists to repel a boggart. Let's practice it now…" He noticed his class started pulling their wands out. "Without wands, please… Now, everyone, repeat after me, 'Ridikkulus!'"

"Ridikkulus." His class recited back at different levels of participation.

"Very good… Now, everyone get in a line…" Lupin guided everyone. Troy and Chad were grinning to see what would happen, but Kelsey looked nervously to Gabrielle and adjusted her glasses. Sharpay and her friends were pushing or shoving their ways into line. William was unsure what scared him. Sharpay and her friends loitered in the back of the class as Lupin continued. "I want each of you to step forward and confront the boggart, but the incantation is not enough to finish it off. What really finishes it off is the sound of laughter. You need to make it assume the form of something you find amusing, let me explain…" He tugged Troy out of line. "Mr. Boyden, what terrifies you the most?"

"I'm not sure…" Troy mumbled back a bit unprepared. "I don't think I'm really scared of anything…"

"If you're scared of anything, believe me, I assure you the boggart will discover it." Lupin advised him as the wardrobe shook with the restless boggart.

"My grandfather's house scared me a bit." Troy confessed.

"Ah…" Lupin backed to the wardrobe ready to unlatch the door. "Well, let's see what the boggart has to say…" He pulled the door open as a breeze poured out and the contents of the room waved round in the gush of air. From out of the opening poured a fine white mist, and Troy's eyes widened in fear as it loomed up seven feet tall over him. It took the form of a scary rotted ghost without any eyes, thin wispy hair and skeletal arms reaching up to grab him. It looked far less human and more cadaverous than any of the regular ghosts in Hogwarts. It did not talk… it just moaned its deathly cry and scared and stunned many of the other classmates. Troy froze trying to think to see this horrible apparition before him.

"Think, Mr. Boyden, think!!!" Lupin sparred him on.

"Ridikkulus!!!" Troy finally stammered, and the ghost blew up like a big silver balloon with a smiley face on it, much to the humor and amusement of his classmates.

"Very well done, Mr. Boyden!!" Lupin started playing some big band music to go with the lesson. "Mr. Danforth, up next…"

Chad stepped up to balloon unraveling into a whirlwind and getting larger until it stopped spinning. It took the form of a hideous clown with a white face, bright orange hair and white polka dots on a blue costume. One of the girls shrieked at its ugly face and its gloved fingers wiggling and squirming in anticipation of scaring him. Chad froze for a few seconds at that horrible face before recalling the spell.

"Ridikkulus!!!" He pointed at it, and the clown turned into a middle-aged man in clown face standing in his boxer shorts. Chad started cracking up and laughing as the clownish boggart looked down and noticed its clothes were gone. With Professor Lupin encouraging them on, Kelsey stepped up and the boggart turned into a large man-sized flying insect with huge wings, large round faceted eyes and mandibles the size of garden shears. She jumped back trying to run at the site of it, just barely saying the incantation.

"Ridikkulus!" She barely spoke and the giant hornet developed tiny wings and dropped into the floor with roller skates on its feet. The class as well as the teacher was laughing as Gabrielle stepped forward next. The giant insect dissipated into smoke as it twisted and shape-shifted into a person this time. Rising up from kneeling on the floor, it took the form of Gabrielle's vicious cousin, Alex Russo. Dressed in a long period witch's dress, she stared back at Gabrielle coldly and vehemently with cold animosity. The brunette ingénue was stunned to see the boggart appear as Alex. Too speechless to talk, Gabrielle stared down the boggart in her cousin's form and forced herself to day the word.

"Miss Russo…" Lupin tried to shake her surprise.

"Ridikkulus!" Gabrielle cried out as Alex's hair turned blonde to Gabrielle's amusement. As she laughed, the class started wondering who the person was that had appeared to her except Sharpay who reacted intrigued and beamed knowingly. Lupin meanwhile applauded Gabrielle for being creative, and William Samms came up ahead of Taylor. Coming face to face with the blonde doppelganger of Alex Russo, they looked eye-to-eye very briefly, and Alex exploded in size with barely an effort or a moment notice, striking her head on the rafters in the ceiling and looking down with as a giantess with Gabrielle's own face and appearance. The entire class screamed at his nightmares coming to life, and Lupin rushed to take charge once again. Stunned and confused, Gabrielle rushed to Troy to protect her from her giant counterpart.

"Mr. Samms!!" Professor Lupine pulled forth his wand as his students raced around the room to get out of the way. He watched William being jerked up off his feet in the twenty-foot tall Gabrielle's fingers and then taken higher up to be dangled over her open lips about to be swallowed. "Mr. Samms!!" He dodged around at the boggart's feet trying to get a clear shot with his wand to save his student as the class rushed to the walls and a few fled the room. Across the room, Gabrielle noticed something what their teacher was not catching in the distraction. Unnoticed, Sharpay, Lily and Tawni were rifling through the reserved spell and potion books of Professor Lupin's private collection. They took one book and slid it into Lily's purse as the professor was trying to save William. The back of Sharpay's black cloak was covered in a thin layer of dust. Having secreted the book into their possession, they next whirled round pretending to be innocent.

"_Imprisono Arrestus_!!!" Professor Lupin caught the boggart with a spell right to the middle of Gabrielle's face it was wearing and drove it back into the wardrobe, but William immediately dropped and hit the floor hard with a nasty crunch. By now, Miss McGonagal's class and Professor Caernavon's classes poured from their rooms next door to watch the fracas. The room settled down, and everyone calmed and caught their breath. Gabrielle looked at William at the floor speechless. Why was he afraid of her?

"That's the end of the lesson… Everyone calm down. Class dismissed for now." Lupin helped William up to his feet. The blue-eyed youth with the mop-top of thick black hair was clutching his broken ribs and bleeding from the nose. His broken arm was hanging at a weird angle. Professor McGonagal was the head of Gryffindor House; she came from her room to help him and take him off to see Madame Pomfrey in the medical ward on campus once again.

"What happened here?" She inquired.

"A mere boggart surprised us." Lupine looked around with a silly grin. "Everthing is under control now."

"Dude…" Chad came over grinning a bit. "You're scared of Gabrielle?" He started laughing as other students pointed and whispered secretly.

"That will be enough of that Mister Danforth." Professor McGonagal chided him.

"I get nervous around girls!" William confessed with a painful raspy voice. "I have seventeen older sisters, and I have bad dreams, okay!" He shot back as Lupin escorted him away to be treated for his injuries. Wondering about William then confused about what Sharpay had taken, Gabrielle looked around as the class parted to leave the classroom. Sharpay in particular with Tawni and Lily seemed to be in a hurry.

"Sharpay…" Gabrielle rushed to confront her. "Shouldn't you be returning the book you took from Professor Lupin's shelf?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about." She poked Gabrielle out of her way with a smile, a toss of her hair and continued off to Slitherin Hall. Distracted for the moment, Gabrielle looked to Troy and Chad for answers and tried to figure out what to do. Sharpay could sneak that book back before she could tell Professor Lupin, and she was right. After she hurried to tell him, they rushed back to see if a book was missing from his potions collection and there wasn't. Whatever the blonde one wanted from the book, she had it, and it was probably not good for anyone. While everyone else was laughing and poking fun at William's expense, Gabrielle's mind worked to solve the mystery.

"So, Mr. Samms is scared of our lovely young Gabrielle…" In the courtyard arch, Hagrid heard the story of the incident from Troy.

"Not really…" Gabrielle chided Troy for telling stories. "I talked to him in the Medical Wing afterwards. He just gets a little shy, and he has bad dreams as a result of being teased. It could have been anyone the boggart turned into from Kelsey, Taylor or even Sharpay…" She paused a moment as Hagrid walked with her, Chad and Troy. "I wonder why Sharpay was covered in all that dust. The only place she could have got it is the third floor corridor."

"And why would she want to go there…" Chad walked along. "What with that big three-headed dog there?"

"Who told you three about Muffin?" Hagrid overheard.

"Wait!" Troy stopped in disbelief. "That thing has a name?"

"Of course, he's got a name!" Hagrid stopped in the archway to the north courtyard. "He's mine. I got him from a Greek fellow at the pub, and I lent him to Dumbledore to guard the…" He caught himself too late. "I shouldn't have told you that. No more questions!" He changed his mood.

"But Hagrid…" Gabrielle implored him. "Whatever Muffin's hiding, Sharpay could be trying to steal it!!"

"Codswollop!!" Hagrid refused to believe it. "There's no way a student, even Miss Evans, can get past Muffin." He stopped at the arch into the castle. "You three are meddling in things that ought not to be meddled with. Whatever that dog is guarding is strictly between Professor Dumbledore and Professor Danvers!"

"Professor Danvers?" Troy reacted confused and looked to Gabrielle then back to Chad. There was no teacher at Hogwarts with that name! Hagrid made a face that showed how upset he was with himself.

"I shouldn't have said that." He mumbled under breath. "I shouldn't have said that…. I shouldn't have said that." He uttered it again and again as he continued on about his way.


	7. Chapter 7

7

Thanksgiving came and departed as fast as it arrived. There were two more Quidditch matches before Christmas and it looked like either Griffindor House or Slitherin House could end up winning the house cup and going forward to represent the school in the Inter-School Quidditch Match against Wiz-Tech, but that was still up to whether Ravenclaw could still beat Slitherin in their up-coming match so they were not completely out of the running. Gabrielle's heart was going out to William as he went through two days of bad jokes and taunts from his classmates, mostly from the young criminals and bullies in Slitherin House, but a few from peers he thought were his friends. It got so bad that he asked Professor McGongal if he could be excused from his classes for a few days, but she turned down his request. She would deal with the taunts and jibes, but she would not make him a special case. During study time, he sat in one of the window seats of the assembly hall as far as he could from all the others with the ghost of Marley one of the thirty-four resident ghosts of Hogwarts as his own sympathetic friend. Gabrielle looked over her shoulder to him and back to Chad and Troy. She wondered if they were going to let up with all the teasing.

"I wonder if I should talk to him again." She asked out loud. "He looks so lonely over there."

"I kind of feel bad about the jokes we made." Chad looked to Troy and back again. "I keep forgetting that some of us just aren't that lucky as we are."

"Yeah…" Troy looked up from his textbooks on potions. "You know, it's girls like Sharpay that do that to guys. I can't begin to comprehend what it must be like to be unable to talk to girls. Like I need another reason to not like her…"

"Here he is… here he is…" Taylor was coming up the Ravenclaw side of the Griffindor side of the table carrying a large book with Kelsey following her. She dropped the book before them on the table. They had asked her if she had ever known a Professor Danvers ever connected to Hogwarts, and she had offered to look him up in the school library. She plunked down a copy of "Hogwarts – A History" before them open to the moving faces of teachers both past and present. "Professor William Nathaniel Danvers…" She pointed at the grinning black and white image of Danvers in the book. "He taught History of Magic here at Hogwarts from 1934 to 1951 before taking a sabbatical to teach regular kids. He's now back to teaching students magic at Wiz-Tech!"

"Wiz-Tech…" Gabrielle suddenly recalled a memory. "That's where I heard that name before! That's where my cousins are going to school! Justin told me about him before I came here!"

"What else does the book say about him?" Kelsey asked while pushing her glasses up her nose.

"Not much…" Taylor admitted and read the man's description aloud. "Favored as one of the most popular and beloved teachers under Headmaster Dippel, Professor Danvers started out as an expert in Spells and Hexes before focusing on Muggle Studies and the History of Magic. He is most well known for his defeat of the Morlocks with the help of his close friend, Albus Dumbledore." She looked up as owls came in delivering mail.

"Doesn't really tell us much, does it?" Troy remarked as a letter dropped from an owl into his books.

"I'd bet there's more about him in the restricted section of the library." Chad spoke up as he recalled the section of books locked behind the steel door of the library. It took a note from a teacher to get in that room and the books were never taken out. His Wizards Monthly was finally delivered to him whole and to his lap. A small sack was dropped to Troy from Horace with a gift of cookies from his mother. Maddie also flew in with a larger package for Gabrielle. She dropped it to the table for her and alighted in a circle before resting on the table. Gabrielle grinned to her and held her to her face to make over her and place her to her shoulder before inspecting her package. She flipped it over to the words: "To be opened ONLY in the Griffindor Common Room."

"I wonder who sent you that." Kelsey looked down at it.

"I don't know…" Gabrielle stood with Maddie clinging to her shoulder and collected up her books and package. "I'll tell you what it is later. Just keep searching for more on Professor Danvers!" She was now hastening back to her common room to open her package. Chad looked to Taylor and back to Troy and then hurried after her through the hall of portraits to Griffindor House. They had to give the password to the Fat Lady portrait again after her, but by time they caught up with Gabrielle, she was already sitting on the sofa before their fireplace next to the house's Christmas Tree. She pulled the string off and unwrapped what looked to be fabric wrapped in thin white paper. She found a note.

"What's it say?" Troy noticed two of their co-house members heading out as they arrived.

"Your father left this with me a long time ago. He would have wanted you to have it." Gabrielle read the note verbatim. "That's it. No signature." She pulled out what looked to be a long thin cloak. It was somewhat thin to see through but there were weavings in it that sparkled in the light. "I think it's a cloak." She placed Maddie from her shoulder to the back of the sofa and pulled it over her shoulders, but as she did, it enveloped up her body and made her vanish all but for her head and neck now floating in the air where she stood. All Chad and Troy could see was her floating head.

"How does it look?" She asked.

"There's nothing to see." Troy responded surprised and unprepared. Gabrielle looked down and saw her floor and the table, but nothing else.

"Where's my body?" She started reacting scared to death. "Where's my body?!"

"I know what that is!" Chad reacted. "That's an invisibility cloak. My mom read me about one when I was a kid! You've got to let me borrow it!"

"Someone thinks a lot about you to send you something like that." Troy looked to Chad and back to her with an amused grin.

"But I don't know who that would be…" Gabrielle thought a second and realized that this gift could not come at a better time. "Wait a second, I could use this to get into the restricted section of the library!"

"Yeah, you could…" Troy watched as she pulled the hood up and made her head vanish. "But then… Gabrielle? Gabrielle?! Chad, stop her!!!" They moved to grab the exuberant little brunette but only got the sound of giggling out of the air. Troy felt playfully kicked into the sofa, and Chad felt her poke his shoulder, but all they were grabbing was empty air. Their door to the hall opened and closed by itself.

"She's going to get us in a lot of trouble." Troy realized.

"Or expelled." Chad looked to him. "Oh yeah, I know my priorities!"

Feeling like one of the ghosts, Gabrielle was hurrying through the hall of portraits as if she was a little girl. In the hall outside the assembly room, she playfully tapped Kelsey then Taylor, giggling at them briefly before rushing on her way through the castle to the library on the second floor. On the way, she dodged other students and Mr. Filtch, the caretaker. At the stairs to the second floor, Snape had Sharpay, Lily and Tawni cornered at the bottom landing.

"Someone has been stealing from my private ingredients." He accused the girls. "If I had any suspicion that it was any of you, I'd…" He seemingly sensed Gabrielle and somehow saw her… or not. He started reaching out at her as she backed away from his grasp; nothing catching in the air of his fingers. He sensed a presence, but not who or what it was. Gabrielle, meanwhile, rushed past him and the girls, carefully treading the stairs as the late afternoon sun was streaming through the west side windows, casting long shadows through the room. Her uninhabited shadow jumped and danced from shelves to tables, nary a student noticing as she haunted the length of the library dodging classmates nervously on her way to the restricted wing.

"Alohomora." She briefly popped the lock with a whisper, pulled the door open slightly to slide in sideways. Her cloak briefly caught on the door and her leg and arm were exposed but just briefly. Catching it, Gabrielle moved out of sight behind the first shelf and pulled back her cloak. With just her head bobbing along, she checked out some of the titles. It was in order as was the regular section by subject. The history books had titles like "A History of the Dark Arts" and "Witchcraft Through the Ages." Under law, there was a book called "The Great Witch Hunts," and the sciences section included "The Last of The Dinosaurs," "Cryptids And Creatures" and "The Secret History of Dragons." A look to watch out for someone, and she moved to the biography section for books ranging on such personages as Viscount Barnabus Aarnulf to Queen Catherine Zyckoff.

"Baroness Russlein Altebar, Countess Ersebet Bathory, Dryllus Bord, Silas Broadmoor, Amadeus Byrd, Celestine Carnavon…" She read a few of the names under her breath. "Cassius the Cruel, King Conaan, Cyrus of Stygia, Dacchus of Bechtin, Antonius De Moor, The Diary of Lemuel Dehner… No Danvers…"

"Who left the Restricted Section unlocked?!" Madame Proudfoot asked the other librarians. Startled and surprised, Gabrielle looked back quickly and pulled her hood over to enclose and conceal her head again. Madame Proudfoot was closing and locking up the restricted section once more. Once heading to return some books to the shelves, she stepped over to lock up the restricted section and started swinging the door closed, but then it stopped on something. She made an odd look and checked the floor and opening for something stopping her then stamped the rug with her foot to flatten anything stopping the door before finally sealing the door and relocking. Her cart of books jostled as if someone had it, and Susan Bones stumbled over something in her way and dropped her books. Danae Starling and Melody Lightbringer felt someone brush past them and stepped back looking around, and Randall Crumbs felt something push against him in the doorway as he and Rhesus Carrigan tried to enter.

Daintily hurrying on her way, Gabrielle raised her cloak to rush back to the meeting hall, but instead of heading the length of the library to the main stairs, she rushed toward the north hall for the rarely traveled back stairs. This way was rarely traveled. It was darker and foreboding with forgotten and deserted furniture on the top landing outside of the library. As she hastened to the common room again, she noticed someone and ducked to hide behind a support column for the roof. Her back pressed to the cold brick, she looked again to see if it was clear and realized the truth. She had just seen her reflection in a mirror. It was a large floor mirror in a wood-carved frame with letters carved across the top. It read "Yensid." As she came closer to look upon it, her reflection faded away and turned into a vision. In the glass, she saw her home on Waverly Place, and in the loft above the restaurant, she could see Justin, Alex and Max… her Uncle Jerry and Aunt Theresa… She could not hear their voices, but they had to be waiting for her to come home from school, yet… there were no Christmas decorations in the loft. If she could see her home from many miles away in the glass, why wasn't there any Christmas decorations up yet? She looked deeper and saw the calendar. It read March 2009. If this was the past she was seeing, where was she? Why was she not in the vision? When her fingers tapped the glass, the vision fogged over and changed location. It turned into the location of a huge hotel lobby of grand and opulent reputation. Two twin young boys rolled through the lobby on skateboards chased by an irate African-American hotel manager past a candy counter area. At the counter was Sharpay and in front of her was Taylor and… herself!!! What did these images mean? Where they the future? Why was she not in the other image? In this image, she called Sharpay "Maddie" and she called Taylor "Mary Margaret," and they called her Corrie! The boys were named Zack and Cody, and they were being berated by hotel manager Marion Moseby. What were these images and why was she seeing them?! Gabrielle tapped it again and the image faded away again to a ski lodge somewhere else. It revealed a karaoke contest and in this vision Troy was pulled up on stage next to her, but in this vision, her counterpart seemed quieter… more aloof or withdrawn. It didn't make sense. Images of her family without her, images of herself with other names, images of herself doing things she did not recognize… Her eyes filled with tears of confusion as she pulled her invisibility cloak tight over her head and raced down the back way to the first floor.


	8. Chapter 8

8

The first weekend after Thanksgiving, Hagrid entered the Dark Forest looking for the right tree to be the Hogwarts Christmas tree. The centaurs in the forest showed him which tree to take that would work the best, and the resident faeries blessed it to honor Gaea the Earth Mother for the Winter Solstice. He then cut it down with the ritual permission from the spirits of Earth to use it to celebrate the traditions of another religion. He dragged it the mile to the castle and then through the Great Hall and through the way into the assembly hall during study period where it stood bare one night until the next morning when it and much of the castle suddenly appeared decorated for the holidays. Professor Flitwick and many of the older Third and Fourth Years got to decorate it. Gabrielle had joined Chad, Troy and many of her Gryffindor residents to decorate their own tree in their common room just the week before to get ahead of everyone else. Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw then rushed to get theirs up as Slitherin defied tradition and zapped up a tree from an old photo in a book. Most of the presents that came to put under them arrived in the mail. Chad's mother sent sweaters for him and Troy to wear as they returned home to Alaska. William's mother sent him a box of chocolate cherry mint cookies from Maine, which he shared with many of his Gryffindor classmates, and Troy got a leather-bound notebook with a mystical latch to keep his schoolwork straight. Kelsey was told in a letter that she'd get her gift upon joining her parents for a trip to Australia, but upon hearing about Gabrielle's home family traditions, she followed Gabrielle home instead to Waverly Place to see the Christmas decorations in New York City from Rockefeller Center to Times Square. The hardest thing was coming home again as a fully-fledged Hogwarts student.

"My baby girl!!!" Theresa saw Gabrielle entering and rushed to hug her. Carrying one bag and Maddie in her cage, the brunette sorceress was not expecting to be mobbed just inside the front door. Garbed in his white and dark blue Christmas sweater, Jerry Russo looked up to his niece from baking cookies, and Justin glanced over from sipping eggnog. On the sofa, Alex and her best friend, Harper Finkle, were reading fashion catalogs; Alex suddenly looking annoyed and turning her head away disgusted. Max sat at the kitchen table wearing fake reindeer antlers.

"I missed my baby girl so much!!!" Theresa squeezed Gabrielle tightly as Jerry tried to get in to hug her. Her niece just giggled warmly smiling ear-to-ear from the love and warmth of her loving family.

"Mom, I'm right here!!!" Alex reacted out of jealousy and shook her head in disbelief.

"Okay, Theresa, let her breathe." Jerry came over to hug his niece.

"And Gabrielle's friend, Chelsea!!!" Theresa moved to hug and squeeze Kelsey.

"Kelsey…" The Boston native corrected her and reacted from being hugged by Gabrielle's aunt. "Wow, your aunt is REALLY friendly!" She looked over after being rocked and hugged on her feet.

"I know…" Gabrielle hadn't stopped smiling. She hugged her Uncle Jerry and Cousin Justin, trying to introduce everyone as they came up to her. Harper even came over to give her a hug and kiss to the cheek, but Alex just wandered over and acknowledged her blandly before pretending to be distracted by the peanuts on the table. Max, meanwhile, noticed Maddie in the cage and lit up excitedly.

"You got me an owl?" He grinned excitedly. "You got me an owl?!!! Yes!" He lifted the cage to look at her. "I'll call him Hugo!"

"Her name is Maddie, and she's mine." Gabrielle hated to bust her cousin's bubble, but she loved Maddie too much to let her go.

"Why would you call Hugo Maddie?" Max reacted confused, but Gabrielle amusingly shook her head while hanging her jacket and Kelsey's coat and hat on the pegs behind the front door.

"Max, I did get you a gift, but I'll pull it out later, meanwhile..." She lifted her bag to unzip and pull it something out of it. "Uncle Jerry, I got this for you." She pulled out a tin of Hughley's Exploding Licorice Pops all the way from Honeyduke's Candy Shop in Hogsmeade. "Is this what you wanted?"

"That's them!" Jerry lit up like a kid. "That's them!! Honeydukes just doesn't deliver to the states." He hurriedly ripped off the plastic seal, twisted off the metal cap and popped one of the soft licorice pops to his mouth. His eyes closed happily as he chewed and chewed and chewed and chewed. "They're just like I remember! Twizzlers doesn't even come close."

"Why are they called exploding pops?" Theresa tried one as a loud pop in Jerry's mouth produced smoked rolling from his lips with the scent of sweet licorice. Not interesting in magic candy exploding in her mouth, Theresa quickly spit her sample out into Kleenex to get rid of it.

"So…" Justin stood handsome and dashing in his green and white Xmas sweater then gestured Kelsey to sit with him and Gabrielle on the sofa. "How's Hogwarts? Does Gabrielle mention me at all?"

"She mentions you a lot!" Kelsey adjusted her eyeglasses as Gabrielle grinned back to her. "Especially a lot of the spells you two made together." Theresa gave the girls eggnog in clear plastic cups to drink and reconnect on the sofa.

"Really?"

"Does she mention me?" Alex sat grinning and adjusting her hair on the other side of Kelsey as Harper sat on the arm of the sofa.

"Uh, yeah…" Kelsey reacted nervously to actually meet her. "Boy, does she talk about you!" Alex felt as if she was offended and gestured as if she couldn't catch a break. She looked away as Max just shined with a bit of a crush on their guest. Kelsey looked at him and back to Gabrielle.

"How about me?" Harper asked.

"Uh, well…" Kelsey did not recall ever hearing about Harper. If Gabrielle had mentioned her at all, she didn't recall it.

"I'm sorry, Harper," Gabrielle looked her aunt and uncle in the decorated loft getting ready for Christmas Eve dinner. "But we talk a lot about magic up there, and well…."

"Oh, I completely understand." Harper was wearing a red dress with a green belt and long sleeves and a barrette holding back her cascading brown hair. "You know, one of my ancestors was tried for witchcraft in England in the Sixteenth Century." She nodded with a proud grin. "I got just a little magic blood myself… but apparently not enough to attend Wiz-Tech or Hogwarts!!!" She sounded a little annoyed.

"Speaking of school…" Justin immediately changed the subject. "I am turning out to be a very good Beater in Quidditch." He nodded proudly. "Gryffindor is going to have a hard time beating Tanglewood in the up-coming Inter-School Quidditch Match this January."

"Yeah," Alex sipped her eggnog with a wry grin. "That's if he can stay on his broom without it tossing him off!" She beamed with an evil little grin and lifted herself up with a vicious little smirk and giggle to get more eggnog. Kelsey watched her heading into the kitchen to get more drink as Max got bored and decided to check out Gabrielle's owl in the cage.

"Wow…" Kelsey realized what Alex was all about and turned back to Gabrielle. "No wonder you saw her in the wardrobe…"

"Yeah…"

"Don't mind Alex…" Justin tried to apologize. "She's dangerously close to getting expelled from Wiz-Tech. She skipped five days of classes the first week of October, turned Mandy DeVasquez into a guy, flooded the third floor boy's bathroom with Jello, sent a letter to Jack Trueblood making him believe that Matthew Zeroni was in love with him and devastated Darkwind Hall with an explosion from a spell she shouldn't have tried. They had to restore a whole section of the basement to house the Darkwind students."

"What's this about a wardrobe?" Harper leaned in after accidentally over-hearing.

"A boggart appeared to me as Alex in my Defense Against The Dark Arts class." Gabrielle confessed to her and her favorite cousin.

"She did?" Justin looked over his shoulder to Alex sitting and brooding on the bottom steps of the staircase and sulking in her white blouse and black jeans. "In my Defense Class at Wiz-Tech, it took the form of Deadhead Fred."

"Who's that?" Kelsey asked.

"A boogeyman from Justin's youth." Gabrielle revealed for Justin. "Uh, Justin… Can you tell me about Professor Danvers?" She was curious about his connections to the funny stuff happening at Hogwarts.

"He's like one of the best teachers at Wiz-Tech!" Justin unabashedly revealed. "He's great. Alex isn't crazy about him though because he makes the lessons cheat-proof."

"We kind of heard about him at Hogwarts." Kelsey looked up as Harper went to snack on chips and cookies then join Alex on the stairs. Freed from her cage by Max, Maddie fluttered over to perch on Gabrielle's shoulder for attention. She stroked her feathers lovingly as he rested.

"I know he used to teach at Hogwarts before the war." Justin dipped some chips at the table next to him to eat. "Anything in particular?"

"Well…" Gabrielle and Kelsey looked nervously to each other. "We think he's having Professor Dumbledore hold something for him at Hogwarts, and that one of the students could be trying to get it, but we're not sure what it could be."

"Professor Danvers is a lot more than a wizard." Justin confessed. "He practices sorcery and doesn't use a wand. He's been taught by Tibetan mystics, Chinese priests, Celtic magicians, African shamans, Native American medicine men, Hindu priests… He's credited in the Who's Who in the Magic World as one of the top twenty most powerful magicians in the world behind Merlin, Professor Crumbs, Professor Dumbledore, Baron Worth and Lord Maple."

"What specifically…" Glancing briefly to Kelsey, Gabrielle tried to lead Justin to a certain direction. "…is he known for?"

"Well," Justin sipped the last of his eggnog and thumbed his cup wanting more. "He wrote the Atlas of Mystical Dimensions, abridged the laws against wizards traveling through time and created the Crystal Key."

"The Crystal Key?" Gabrielle and Kelsey chorused together.

"Yeah…" Justin reacted as if it was no big deal. "It's just some mystical key for opening mystical gateways. Last I heard… it was locked away in a bank in London…." He rose to get more eggnog. "But the one thing he's known about is something he calls the Great Mystery, a riddle which he says explains why so many lives parallel each other…" He turned toward the kitchen area.

"Oh my god…" Gabrielle turned round and whispered to Kelsey. "That's what Muffin must be guarding on the third floor! That's what Hagrid moved to Hogwarts!"

"But why would Sharpay want a key for other dimensions?" Kelsey thought about it. "It doesn't exactly make sense!"

"Maybe…" Gabrielle started flashing on her old fairy tales. "To steal something that would make her a much more powerful wizard. There are several dimensions in the Atlas of Magic: Olympus, Asgard, Narnia, Oz or even Avalon where she steal an object of power. She could become unstoppable. We're talking… potential godhood." Kelsey made a face as if she was shocked into silence.

"Dinner's up…" Jerry spoke and set the plates out. Looking up once, Gabrielle stroked Mimi on her shoulder and rose to eat leading the way for Kelsey. Theresa came over from setting the dinner table, and Max tried to rush ahead to get a good chunk of ham. Justin looked the meal over and tried to honor his vegetation tastes. Alex looked at the owl on her cousin's shoulder and narrowed her eyes at it.

"Couldn't get a parrot, huh…" She cracked.

"I try to have Maddie with me at all times." Gabrielle mentioned. "What kind of familiar do you have at Wiz-Tech?"

"A snake." Alex commented. "My familiar ate Justin's familiar." She bobbed her head giggling hysterically amused by the incident.

"Clarence…" Justin choked back the emotions. "Alex, you still owe me one frog!!!"

"Don't worry, Justin…" Jerry stood serving everyone before himself. "I'll get you a nice big toad from Fanny's Familiars from Crooked Street before you return to school." Crooked Street was the leading magic community for magicians in the United States and Canada. It wasn't as notable as Diagon Alley in London or Mary Jane's Closet in Edinburgh, but it was much more accessible than Mansfield Tunnel hidden away under Los Angeles, California.

"Now, Kelsey…" Jerry tried to make Gabrielle's guest feel welcome. "Usually on Christmas, my brother and sister show up with their families, we have dinner and then we open the gifts, but they both joined their in-laws this year so this year it's just us. Feel free to help yourself to as much as you want."

"Uncle Kelbo has a big appetite." Max remarked. "This is the first year we may actually have leftovers."

"Thank you, Mister Russo."

"Gabrielle," Jerry turned to his other brother's daughter. "Honey, did you get the gift I sent you at Hogwarts?"

"Gift?" Gabrielle looked confused and looked to him as Kelsey turned to sit at the table. "You mean the cloak? You sent it to me, Uncle Jerry?"

"Well, yeah…" Jerry lit up with a smile as if she was his own daughter. "I mean, your dad left it to me before he died, and… Well, I just thought he'd want you to have it."

"You forgot to sign the note."

"I'm sorry, honey… but I was in a hurry to get it to you at school. Besides, I knew if Alex or Max saw you with it that they'd want one too, and… I'm not getting into that trouble." He paused a moment and leaned in to her. "No one at Hogwarts saw you with it, did they?"

"Just my friends, Uncle Jerry…" She hugged and kissed him to the cheek. "Thank you so much!"

"Oh, sweet heart…" Jerry hugged her and kissed her cheek back. "Merry Christmas!"

"Merry Christmas!"

Over at the table, Alex watched her father hugging her cousin and rolled her eyes as she ate her carrots. She could not recall her father ever bonding with her like that!


	9. Chapter 9

9

Hogwarts was easier to get back to than it was returning home. Upon returning, Gabrielle easily started slipping back into her class routine and her lessons, but just as Troy and Chad were spending more and more time with each other and Taylor and Kelsey were bonding, Gabrielle was experiencing some form of after holiday blues. She was spiriting herself off in secret without Kelsey or Troy to the rarely used north stairway of the library by herself to watch herself in the Mirror of Yensid. In the reflection, she saw herself and Troy in a school in Albuquerque singing together in a school talent show or she could tap it again and watch herself, Taylor and Sharpay in a Boston Catholic school and hanging out together in the hotel as Sharpay left them for mysterious chores. While Kelsey appeared in the first visions, she didn't appear in the second setting. In other visions produced from tapping the glass, Gabrielle saw herself and Alex attending school as best friends in another school and in yet another she saw her parents alive and working as archaeologists in Egypt. There were other visions and settings that flitted past from time to time, but the Boston and Albuquerque settings were obviously the most powerful.

"Back again, Miss Russo?" Professor Dumbledore came up the North stairway to the library and paused as he noticed Gabrielle sitting on the floor off to the side and staring into the mirror. The embarrassed teen beauty jumped to her feet out of respect and fear she was in trouble. Professor Dumbledore looked upon her curiously; his long white bead hanging straight down as if he was Merlin himself. It wasn't round as a beard that she'd expect on Santa Claus, but it was certainly voluminous. His compassionate and knowledgeable eyes looked upon her for a response.

"It appears…" He looked to her and back to the mirror. "That you like so many before you have discovered the mystical powers of the Mirror of Yensid to try to delve into its mysteries"

"I don't understand what I'm seeing." Gabrielle looked back at it. When they both looked into it together, only their reflections appeared. "Is it showing me the future or memories of the past I've forgotten?"

"Yes and no…" Dumbledore replied slowly. "Let me put it like this, the mirror can show you as you could be or who you might have been. It shows us other worlds in other timelines that once were or almost occurred. Let's say, I traveled back in time and stopped myself from becoming headmaster of the school. If I traveled forward in that history, I'd find that Albus Dumbledore still just a teacher or master of another school like Alexandria or Mecklenburg, but… I never really changed time because the teachers of this Hogwarts would still remember me as headmaster. Two timelines co-existing in separate universes linked by common moments in history. Time is immutable, it cannot be changed or altered… All there is out there are… countless parallel worlds, each existing and resonating with their own histories."

"So…" Gabrielle understood the secret. "Those other Gabrielles… each of them are living events I might have experienced."

"Conceivably…" Dumbledore revealed. "But as far back as time goes, not all of them are results of alternate events in your life but the consequences of your ancestors, their ancestors and the people they knew in their lives. You see, the further you go back in time, the more possibilities occur ahead of us. The future is always changing by what we do now, but the past… the past remains the same, even when those we know try to change it."

"It can show me what my life would have been like if my parents hadn't died!" The young beauty realized its secret!

"And had they done so, you might never have made the friends you have now." Dumbledore revealed to her. "So, is one life really better or worse than the other? Do you believe you are better off having friends or by having your parents in your life… or neither. As wonderful as the properties of the mirror may be, it is too easy to get lost in the lives it lets us see, and that is why I've decided to send it to my friend Victorious Crumbs at Mecklenburg."

"That's Justin's school…" Gabrielle realized the school at Mecklenburg was also Wiz-Tech.

"I believe so." The powerful wizard admired its frame and size. "Shame… I'm not sure what to put here in its place… maybe a nice suit of armor or a good trophy case. I'm not sure what will encourage students to favor this way to the first floor." He looked to Gabrielle with a light grin. "If you have any ideas, feel free to let me hear them."

"A nice potted plant?" Gabrielle looked to him favorably.

"Well, that certainly would get Madame Sprout's attention…" He realized. If the mirror was not going to be around any longer, Gabrielle would go back to spending time with Troy and Kelsey. She had barely seen then since the return from the holiday break. Troy was certainly thinking the same thing. Without having seen Gabrielle, he was getting more and more distracted. Daydreaming a lot and getting diverted by his imagination. As he laid in his bed in the Gryffindor First Years room in the Southwest Tower, he thought of Gabrielle and wondered where she was. Sharing the room with him was Chad, William, Scottie McFarland and Rashesh Patel whose twin sister was in Ravenclaw House. As Troy laid back on his bed wondering about Gabrielle, Chad, Scottie and Rashesh were sitting in the window sharing snacks and telling jokes. They each tried Bertie Blott's Every Flavor Beans then moved on to a box of Emerald Emmies's Mint Chocolate Animal Crackers, both available from Honeydukes. Chad got one that made him roar like a lion, and Rashesh had another that had him trumpeting like an elephant from his native India.

"William, Troy," Scottie spoke with his native Celtic accent. "Come on over here and try a mint."

"I'm good." William was playing with Hector, his pet ferret, and feeding him scraps from his roast beef sandwich.

"Guys..." Troy sat up. "Did I offend Gabrielle or something?" He sat in his undershirt and underwear. "After the holidays, I thought we were good, but for the last few days, I've barely seen her. Today after Professor Lupin's class, it seemed as if she couldn't wait to get away from me." He reached into the box and took a mint. "Did I do something to her?" He tried the mint and was almost immediately crying with the voice of a bald eagle. His owl, Horace, turned to watch the spectacle as William's ferret stood on its hind legs like a person and swayed its body in curiosity on what was occurring. William just focused back on his book and allowed the guys to laugh and cajole at each other's antics. Troy meanwhile shook off the effects of the mint and laughed at himself.

"She's probably hanging out with Taylor and Kelsey…" Chad tried to dissuade Troy's feelings of being left out. He noticed his turtle Walter on the floor near William's bed and went to retrieve him. "Troy, you can't let her get into your head. You got to keep your head in the game… and in your wizard studies…" He stepped on something under his foot.

"Ow!!!"

Who said that? It wasn't William, Rashesh or Scottie. Troy looked confused. They each drew quiet and looked around the room wondering where that sixth and decidedly feminine voice came from. William looked under his bed, and Rashesh dropped to the floor, but Troy noticed an extra shadow that did not look right gradually backing away nervously past the heater in the middle of the room. What were the odds of two rare invisibility cloaks in the school? He jumped up with his hand extended and pulled off the cloak!

"Oh, Troy, you missed me!!!" Gabrielle stood there beaming with Kelsey giggling as the guys raced around in various stages of clothing. "Boxers, briefs, boxers, briefs, boxers…" She definitely saw them in another way! Rashesh rushed to his bed for a blanket and Chad jumped into William's bed with him to cover up. Struggling to get his pants up, Troy stumbled and fell over his bed and Scottie slid under his bunk with the sight of the two sudden females.

"William, you look cute in those tighty-whiteys!" Kelsey giggled effervescently with Gabrielle.

"Gabrielle!!!" Chad was freaking out as William kicked him out of his bed. He pulled his bathrobe on to cover up. "You can't be in here! It's against the rules! Especially with Kelsey… She's from Hufflepuff!!" He reacted embarrassed and upset. Kelsey reacted alarmed.

"Gabrielle!" Troy fixed his belt. "You and Kelsey could get tossed out. She can't be in Gryffindor House!!!"

"Oh no, I…"

"What's going on up there?" Chad's brother, Tad, was hurrying up the winding staircase to the boys' upstairs rooms. With Gabrielle quickly pulling her invisibility cloak back on over her and Kelsey, Tad entered in his role as prefect. He looked a lot like his younger brother, but instead of the large crest of thick brown hair, he had a shaved head but the same Danforth chiseled jawline and good looks. "What are you guys getting into?"

"Nothing!" Troy got a non-vocal vow of silence from his house brothers. Scottie came out from under his bed, and Rashesh pretended to be reading. William watched as Hector followed Gabrielle and Kelsey's shadows across the room.

"We were just…" Troy watched as the friendly ferret continued tagging after the girls. "…Horsing around." He picked up the Emerald Emmie's box. "Like a mint?" He offered.

"Not now…" Tad refused the candy. "You guys…." He turned to head back out, and Troy hoped he didn't bump into Gabrielle or Kelsey on the steps down to the common room. Reading at the table, Chelsea Daniels noticed a chair sticking out suddenly jump under the table and lowered her book. First year Valerie Birckhead and Third Year Michael Radcliffe were bumped by something as they entered from the Fat Lady portrait. Once clear, Gabrielle stood in the corridor leading to the main hall and pulled off the cloak.

"I can't believe we did that!" Kelsey's eyes were as round as two silver dollars. "We both could have gotten thrown out of school. My heart is still pounding!" She held her chest to slow her racing heart.

"You better get to your house!" Gabrielle hugged her and they split up in separate directions. The young brunette from Waverly Place only got a few steps away when she noticed Sharpay, Tawny and Lily coming down from the fourth level to the archway for the assembly hall in the next part of the castle. They were talking and gossiping between themselves. Gabrielle couldn't hear what they were saying, but she knew how to get closer. Pulling the cloak over her head, she vanished from sight and daintily glided down to catch up with them.

"I can't believe she wore that to class." Tawni Hart was a Hollywood witch who had spent the last seven years of her life being shared between her mother in England and her father in Southern California. "Who ever thought orange was a winter color? I mean, as if…"

"This school is not nearly as exclusive as I had hoped." Sharpay carried Trixie, her Chihuahua familiar, on her arm as they headed down the stairs. "I mean… have you seen some of the people they allow to attend here? Birckhead? I hear her daddy got her in because he just happens to work in the Ministry of Magic." She stopped on the landing down to the great hall outside the assembly hall. "There is a Native American in our Levitation class!"

Tawni and Lily gasped in shock.

"I know!!!" Sharpay lead the way to Slitherin Hall downstairs. "And that's not the worse of it! I heard Kelsey Neilsen's mother is half mortal, and Sherman Shatterhorn, neither of his parents practice magic!"

"How did someone like him get in here?" Folding her arms before her chest, red-haired Lily Finnerty expressed a little attitude with a twitch of her pampered head. She was a Manhattan native; her grandfather was a judge and her family lived in a Long Island estate.

"His grandfather got him in…" Sharpay stroked Trixie with her right hand. "But that's not the worst thing I heard… Gabrielle Russo. She lives above… above… I can't say it… A sandwich shop!"

"You mean like…" Tawni and Lily looked at each other. "In public?" They reacted extremely offended.

"What does Troy see in someone like that?" Sharpay and her Slitherin sisters turned the right way toward the entry hall. "He deserves someone with pose, refined tastes, incredible beauty and fine breeding… like me! Not someone who orders dinner from the face of a clown!"

"I could not say it better." Lily agreed. "But… another few months and we'll be ready for her."

"Gabrielle Russo is going down!!!" Tawni declared.

"And then Troy will be all…" Sharpay stopped taking and felt a strange presence near her. "Do you guys feel like we're being watched?!"

"Yeah…" Lily looked around the hall outside the assembly hall. "I felt it when we left the Great Hall." They looked around curiously. They couldn't see anyone around them. Moonlight was coming through the grand window at the end of the balcony, and the torches lighting the way to the first floor were casting multiple shadows in numerous directions. It made it look like there were several people around them from just their three shadows.

"Take Trixie to Slitherin House for me." She handed her Chihuahua to Lily as her nervous brown eyes looked around the school. "I'm checking on the you-know-what for you-know-who."

"Okay…" Lily took Sharpay's dog and turned toward the twisting staircase near them to head to their hall. Just a little spooked and on edge, the blonde diva looked around the balcony area and up to the roof for someone hovering over her head, but there was nothing there. She backed up looking behind her and turned running down the stairway to the first floor. On the bottom landing, there were fewer torches burning but still a lot of shadows for just herself. What the heck was going on here? Her mind was playing games with her. She took the passageway under the stairs and strided back to the first floor of the main hall again trying to figure it out. In the dark area between the two parts of the castle, she looked sideways and saw her shadow and a second hooded shadow right behind her. What the heck was that? One of the ghosts of the castle? Not letting it know she could see it, she entered the bottom floor under the moving staircases and casually took one of the steel rods propped by the wall by her for use in hanging the tapestries. She headed toward the staircase leading toward the third floor corridor then swung around and struck the air hard behind her with the rod. It actually knocked out if her hand as if it hit something!!!

"Who's there?!" Sharpay pulled her wand out to light the shadows. "I warn you! I have a wand and I know how to use it!!!" The extra shadow had vanished, but she stepped and checked every part of the floor around her for anything she could touch. Whatever it was, being invisible did not mean it could not be touched. There was something near her feet. She could hear faint wheezing and gasping. Whatever it was, she had hurt it, and now she was going to punish it, but she didn't get that far. She heard voices from the side corridor and raced up back the way she came to keep from breaking curfew. The voices meanwhile kept getting closer. It was a late study session by eight Ravenclaw students led by prefect Monica Danvers, the daughter of Professor Danvers of Wiz-Tech. Ravi Patel, Terry Ahern and Taylor McKessie were among them.

"I leave you here to return straight to Ravenclaw." Monica told them with a toss of her blonde hair. "I need to meet the other prefects. No side trips!" Her younger charges understood and headed to the back staircases, but Taylor stopped and looked behind her. It sounded like someone calling her. Her house brothers and sisters stopped on the stairs and waited.

"I forgot my history notes." She claimed. "I'll be right there." She paused until her Ravenclaw family was in the second floor hall then turned and looked around. She extended her wand from out of her book bag. "Who's there?"

"Taylor…" The voice was somewhere in front of her. The Ravenclaw darling thought she knew that voice. Working out the physics in her head, Taylor noticed the steel rod against one wall and realized how it must have been swung to land where it was. If the person it hit was roughly her size… she turned to her right and reached to the floor pulling off Gabrielle's invisibility cloak. Her best friend was laying on the castle floor coughing up blood and holding her chest in deep unforgivable pain.

"Oh my god, Gabrielle!!!" Taylor pulled the cloak off her to hide it in her book bag.

"Sharpay hit me to the chest!" Her eyes full of tears, Gabrielle was laying on her side considerably wounded. "I can't breath!!!"

"Somebody help me!!!" Crying for her friend, Taylor fired an emergency flare into the hall from her wand then lifted Gabrielle up slowly to get her to Madame Pomfrey in the medical ward upstairs. Any students not in their respectful halls came and looked off the stairs to see what had happened and with them, a few teachers like both Madame Sprout and Severus Snape and eventually even McGongal and Dumbledore to help Gabrielle…


	10. Chapter 10

10

Taylor claimed that she had watched Gabrielle tumble off the moving staircases while she was racing to Gryffindor Hall to keep from breaking curfew. Her heroism and care of Gabrielle netted her ten points for her house, and Gabrielle was warned by Professor McGonagal the punishment for being a few seconds late was not worth risking a fall from the moving staircases. Although a few Slitherin students were spreading jokes about Gabrielle being clumsy, it wasn't exactly clear if Sharpay had put the facts together. If she had, she wasn't letting on. Gabrielle spent one day in pain and medication and a second to recuperate and then the next day was back in class back to full health and spirit.

"I never liked Sharpay…" Troy confessed over dinner what Gabrielle had overheard the other night. "We were friends as kids when our families met for wizard outings, but Chad and I mostly hung around her brother back then."

"Dude…" Chad dropped his chicken bone to his plate and sipped his pumpkin juice. "If everything what Gabrielle is telling us is true, she's got to be going after the Crystal Key, and whatever she plans to do with it, it can't be good!"

"But who's going to believe us?" Gabrielle ate some of her Yorkshire pudding. "I mean, if we could get one adult to listen to us…" They suddenly had the same thought at the same time. There was one adult who would listen to them.

"Hagrid!!!" They all jumped up at once; Chad trailing behind to finish off another drumstick and grab a few Brussels sprouts to eat on the way. From Slitherin Table, Sharpay's gaze followed them leaving the assembly hall.

"They're up to something." She told Tawni and Lily.

Hagrid's hut was on the north section of the property beyond the courtyards. It was a good run from one part of the castle to the other and then out the walkway to the lane heading to Hogsmeade. By time they reached the lane, they were out of breath. Hagrid's little one room thatched hut with the smoke-billowing chimney was not far from the edge of the Dark Forest. Troy, Chad and Gabrielle ascending on it like young trick-or-treaters. Troy knocked eagerly.

"Sorry," Hagrid looked out. "I don't mean to be rude, but I'm not in fit shape to entertain tonight." He closed the door.

"We know about the Crystal Key!" The three Gryffindors chorused with urgency and Hagrid opened the door up to them.

"Oh…" He looked at them astonishingly worried. "Well…" He gestured them in with a quick look out as Troy entered his hut ahead of Gabrielle and Chad. The shack was surprisingly warm and comfy. The furniture was large for a person of Hagrid's size, but every ounce of space was being used.

"Hagrid…" Troy looked up to the gentle giant moving back to his seat at the fireplace. "We think Sharpay's trying to steal the Crystal Key!"

"Od's Botkins!" Hagrid stoked his fire to grow hotter. "You three aren't still going on about that, are you? I mean… Miss Evans isn't going to be stealing anything she already owns."

"What?" Gabrielle was taken aback as she, Troy and Chad looked at each other confused.

"You heard me…" Hagrid looked at something in the kettle on his fire. "Now, I'm a bit busy being preoccupied now…"

"Her family owns it?" Gabrielle was incredulous.

"Of course," Hagrid sat back in his large chair and noticed Fang had woke up. Fang was a huge dog of indeterminate breed. Large and black with drooping ears, he looked like a cross between a Great Dane, a Saint Bernard and a Bloodhound. He sniffed Troy curiously and started slobberingly licking the young visitor. "It was a wedding gift from Professor Danvers to the Evans when they got married and it has been kept here ever since for security reasons. If Sharpay or her brother wanted to see it, all she'd need to do it is get permission from Professor Dumbledore or a teacher, and she ain't going to take it in front of them."

"So she can't get it herself." Chad rationalized. "She needs a teacher to do it, but what's to stop her from going by herself?"

"Don't you get it…" Gabrielle spoke up as Troy tried to stop Fang from slobbering him up. "It's protected by other things as well like spells, traps and enchantments…" She sniffed the room. "What smells like wet dog?"

"That'd be me." Troy wiped a handful of dog slobber out of his hair.

"Waste of a bloody time if you ask me…" Hagrid continued as he reached to a line of towels hanging to dry over his head and gave one to Troy to clean himself. "No one knows how to get past Muffin but for me and Dumbledore…" He caught himself a bit late again. "I shouldn't have told you that. I should not have told you that." He suddenly became aware of a pecking… a pecking noise at his kettle pot.

"Is Poe's Raven back again?" Chad looked around. He watched as Hagrid swung his copper kettle out of the fire and brought it over to his table under the window. The three Gryffindors gathered before him as the pecking turned to cracking and faint chirping. From the kettle, Hagrid took out what looked like a large speckled brownish to tan ball cracking a falling apart in the small towel it was wrapped in. Leaning in closer, Troy realized it was not a ball, but an egg larger that any egg he'd ever seen before. The shell cracked in two halves and a small reptile head peeked out looking around.

"Hagrid," Gabrielle was entranced by the tiny creature. It looked like a regular lizard but it had properties like a long-necked alligator. "What exactly is that?"

"I got him off a young lady at the pub." Hagrid was beaming at it as Troy and Chad came around. "She was about to discard it, and I offered to buy it off her. Didn't know what she had. Just about saved him I did."

"I know what that is." Troy slid in at the table next to Gabrielle. "That's a Cherokee Chahuru dragon. They're practically extinct! My uncle in Scotland knows all about dragons after raising them in Mongolia." Troy added. "He now lives near Loch Ness."

"Isn't he beautiful!!!" Hagrid was crying like a proud father as the young heir to the dinosaurs cooed and coughed. "He thinks I'm his mommy. I think I'll call him, Dudley!" He reached down to stroke Dudley from behind the head and down his long neck. "How about that, Dudley?" The tiny creature belched and hiccupped up methane from its body igniting into flames from the oxygen in the air and the sparks it could generate. The fire burst wasn't bad, but it gave Hagrid a start as he quickly started patting off the flames melting part of his beard and scorching his upper vestments.

"Of course," Hagrid tried to assure his guests. "He'll have to be trained up, of course. Dudley…" He shook his finger at his new pet. "Dudley… Wait, who's that?" He noticed faces in his front window to the school. Troy, Chad and Gabrielle looked round briefly just in time to see Sharpay, Tawni and Lily peeking inside then ducking down and racing back to the school. They were not supposed to be off school grounds after dark and neither were they!

"Sharpay!!!" Gabrielle winced of fear.

"Professor McGonagal is not going to go lightly on this!" Chad reacted.

"How'd I get tossed out of school?" Troy started imaging his future. "You see, mom, we thought one of the other students were trying to steal this key…"

"Wait a second…" Hagrid looked round. "Miss McKessie asked me to get this to you. Maybe it can help…" He produced the invisibility cloak with a knowing grin. It did come in handy. As Sharpay, Tawni and Lily told Professor McGonagal of the three students having left the grounds unsupervised, the four of them stood at the entryway for the three to return. As they waited, something passed by them unseen breaking the dew cast on the castle grounds from the late winter air and casting shadows only after they had passed their meeting party.

"What smells like wet dog?" Lily and Tawni sniffed the air.

"Professor McGonagal…" Sharpay looked up happily. "Maybe we should go after them."

"I don't think so, Miss Evans…" Her teacher stood waiting. "If anything, I'm thinking this is a wild goose chase because if they were out visiting Hagrid, we would have seen them return by now. On the other hand, I have detected three other students who have been out after dark."

"Really?" Sharpay lit up and looked to Lily and Tawni. "Who did you catch?"

"You three."

"What?!" The three girls shrieked.

"Fifty points from Slitherin… each." She turned to head into the castle in the direction of the ascending staircase to her tower quarters, leaving behind three cursing and swearing Slitherin ladies as three Gryffindor students already made the Great Hall and head to their common room. Screaming her head off, Sharpay kicked a statue and broke her toe. Lily and Tawni looked at each other as Sharpay hopped around on her good leg.


	11. Chapter 11

11

"I heard that the Hogwarts end of year exams were supposed to be horrible…" Taylor came out of her Levitation class pleasantly happy. "But that was a breeze!!"

"Speak for yourself…" Chad wasn't quite that sure and caught up with Troy coming out of his History of Magic class with Professor Caenarvon. Gabrielle came up behind Troy and leaned close to him with a light smile.

"So…" She looked to Troy. "Have you decided who to take to the Graduation Party at the end of the week?"

"Hmmmm…" Troy gave it deep thought and looked her over as if he had to consider it. "I was thinking maybe Sharpay…" He teased her, but she refused to be mocked. She started to turn from the walkway out on to the courtyard outside, but realized she was being teased and looked back to Troy with a big beaming grin.

"You are taking me, right?" Taylor confronted Chad.

"Well, if I got to… I got to…" Chad refused to debate it.

"Ryan Evans asked me…" Kelsey came up behind Gabrielle.

"I knew you two were getting to be more than friends…" Troy mentioned and turned back to Gabrielle. "How are you guys doing in broom riding now? Is William still plowing through everyone like a jet fighter?"

"He's been doing really well lately." Gabrielle confessed. In Madame Hooch's class, she herself was getting very accomplished with her broom riding that both she and Kelsey could match each other in flight. Madame Hooch wanted to submit both their names to the Quidditch try-outs next year when they returned as Second-Years. After watching all the games, they were both more than eager to try, but after watching what it took to win the five team Inter-School Quidditch Match against Wiz-Tech and the three other wizard schools, they both started seriously debating the concept much more. On the other hand, William had finally gotten control after swapping brooms for a newer recent model, and he and Ryan were sneaking off to patrol the grounds near the lake. The other side was out of bounds, and Hogsmeade was definitely off limits until they became Second Years. Defense in the Dark Arts was getting more and more interesting as studies turned to evil spirits and the objects to repel them. The journey from class to their common room took them out one of the front arches and along the path to another exterior entrance to a chamber with a stairway to the main hall. Looking up, they saw Hagrid sitting at his hut across the grounds and tossing scraps of food at Fang near him at the ground.

"I wonder how Hagrid is doing with Dudley." Troy looked up.

"They must be happy." Chad grinned. "You know… the first time I met Hagrid, he said he wanted a pet dragon. Now, he's finally got one. Me, on the other hand, I'd…"

"Wait!" Gabrielle in her Hogwarts uniform stopped and looked back at them. "Hagrid wanted a… How could I be so stupid?" She shook her head. "Troy, as rare as dragon eggs are, isn't it odd that someone just happened to have one where Hagrid could have it?"

"Yeah, but…" Troy tried to answer her, but she raced off path toward Hagrid's hut. Troy and Chad hurried to catch up with her hurrying across the lane into the direction of the hut, stopping right before Hagrid and Fang sniffing at Chad's feet.

"Hagrid…" Troy stopped to meet him. "How's Dudley? He's must be up to two feet by now."

"At least…" Hagrid sat at the bench amidst the students filing past and tossed Fang the last of his sandwich. "But I really don't know. Dumbledore learned about him and recommended I send him to live with other dragons down under in a dragon preserve in Australia." He pulled out a blue handkerchief with white spots to blow his nose. "He just left this morning."

"I'm sorry…" Both Chad and Gabrielle tried to assay his feelings.

"I mean… what if he ain't happy with other dragons?" Hagrid was sitting and still a bit taller than them. "Fang and I are like the only family old Dudley's has. What if he forgets me?"

"Don't dragons remember everything?" Troy knew his dragon facts. "They can live for almost five hundred years."

"Hagrid…" Gabrielle turned their visit into an interrogation. "Do you recall who gave you the dragon egg? What did they look like?"

"I don't rightly remember." The giant groundskeeper answered. "She had her hood pulled over."

"What did you two talk about?" Chad tried to remind him another way. "Did she ask about Hogwarts?"

"No, we talked about the types of creatures I've taken care of and told her that after Muffin, that taking in a dragon was no problem at all." He beamed happily to talk about something he loved so much. "You see… the trick to raising any creature is knowing how to calm it. With Muffin, all you got to do is play him music and he goes straight to sleep, and with Aragog…" He caught himself way too late again. "I shouldn't have told her that!"

Gabrielle made a face of sheer terror and raced back to the castle. Hagrid rose upset with what he'd done and fretted about his breach of castle security. Chad and Troy chased Gabrielle in through the archway they had emerged from just moments ago and headed to the first floor classrooms under the second floor library in the school. They raced past their Defense class straight into the potions class of Professor McGonagal, the head of Gryffindor House. She was working at her desk at the head of the room as they barged in and raced up the middle of the room.

"I have to see Professor Dumbledore!" Gabrielle was distraught as Troy and Chad caught up with her.

"I'm sorry…" Minerva spoke warmly and removed her glasses. "But Professor Dumbledore had a meeting with the Ministry of Magic. He should be back by tomorrow afternoon." She leaned back as if they were her grandchildren. "Is there anything I can help you with?"

"We know about the Crystal Key!" Troy and Gabrielle looked at each other briefly. "We think someone is going to steal it!"

"The Crystal Key?" Minerva looked at them surprised. No student was supposed to know about that! "I don't know how you students learned about that, but I assure you, it is very well protected. Now, forget you heard of it, and…"

"Professor McGonagal…" Chad tried to tell her what they had learned. "You have to believe us, but we think…"

"Mr. Danforth…" Their mentor and teacher tried to assure them with decorum and understanding. "Believe me when I tell you that that key is protected and guarded by spells and traps from the combined teachers of Hogwarts. It would be dangerous for anyone untrained to go after it, but… if it will assure you, I'll alert the other teachers to your fears, and we will confirm it is still protected. Will that suffice?"

"Well," The three looked amongst themselves. "I guess…"

"Very well, now please…" Her voice became more authoritative. "Return to your dormitory."

The three of them turned round feeling defeated, and Professor McGonagal restored her spectacles to review the student's lessons. She was more dismayed by their allegation than by the mere suggestion that anything so well guarded could be stolen. Gabrielle, meanwhile, drifted onward unsure and preoccupied. That key was in danger and she was sure of it.

"She seems pretty sure of their defense." Troy remarked.

"Just like Custer at Little Big Horn…" Chad quipped.

"Troy, I can't get over this feeling that if that key was stolen, and we did nothing about that we'd be just as guilty for doing nothing as the person who actually stole it." Gabrielle walked back and around a circle. "I've never felt so helpless." She pulled her hair back distraughtly to briefly reveal the small scar above her right eye. "It's almost as if… this was what I was here to do. As if it was my…"

"Isn't this interesting…" The voice of Severus Snape, their potions teacher came slowly out of his classroom. "Now, what would three young students be doing in on a day… just like this?" He stood in those dark pilgrim clothes, his dark cape hanging down off his shoulders. Standing in his shadow, Gabrielle looked up to his dour non-expressionist face and his dark eyes looking her and her friends over. Chad and Troy drew silent as well after experiencing several of his angry classroom tirades. Gabrielle personally noted he had a fine thin coat of dust to the back of his cape from the third floor corridor.

"If one didn't know better…" Snape drew his cape over him as he stood out of the sunlight. "One might think you were conspiring against… one of your own." He noticed Gabrielle looking at the dust on his person. She looked up to him knowingly as if she had discovered a secret about him, but what? He returned a different look at her, which was equally curious, but suspicious of her seeming nature as well. He looked over the three of them and turned with a flourish toward the other pathway, leaving them behind to their contemplating.

"What happened to you guys?" Taylor and Kelsey were standing at the archway to the dormitories. "You were right behind us, and…"

"Taylor…" Gabrielle looked to them. "I think I figured out how Sharpay is going to steal the Crystal Key; she has Professor Snape helping her."

"He had dust on him…" Chad had noticed. "Just like we got from the Third Floor."

"I don't think she has it yet." Troy wasn't convinced as the five of them talked. "If she had it already, she would have already used it, and we would have noticed." He paused. "Tonight, I'll go check and see if anyone else has been up there."

"I'll go with you." Chad patted Troy on the back as his partner.

"Me too!" Gabrielle added.

"No, it'd be too dangerous."

"In that case, I'll go with you." Taylor shook her head at him. "We are not a couple of scared females."

Troy and Chad looked at each other out of disbelief.

"Troy, I'm a part of this." Gabrielle resisted their concern. I have to help." Gabrielle looked to her friend from Hufflepuff House with the glasses. "Kelsey?"

"Well," Kelsey looked at them. "I guess I've never seen a three-headed dog before…"

"Fine…" Troy responded as their unofficial leader. "The five of us up against Sharpay. We're all in this together…" He placed his hand out and Gabrielle put hers in followed by Taylor, Chad and Kelsey.

"Don't be starting a musical here now, dude…" Chad commented.


	12. Chapter 12

12

A bit of plotting between them, and the five made plans to get together at an hour after ten o'clock curfew. The three Gryffindors would meet Taylor and Kelsey at the back second floor staircase to the third floor close to the tower room holding Muffin. Slipping out of her room in her Hogwarts uniform, Gabrielle started coming up from the girl's rooms downstairs to look for Chad and Troy and met them coming down to look for her. They met on the landing of their common room and started quietly sneaking out to avoid Chad's brother, but someone else discovered them. About fifteen inches tall and chattering away on the back of the sofa, William's ferret, Hector, noticed them as they tried to steal their way to the hidden entrance.

"Hector…" Chad whispered at it. "Quiet. Quiet there… You're not supposed to be down here."

"Neither are you." William sat up from the sofa after falling asleep with a book. "What are you three doing up after curfew?" He took Hector to run up his arm and lay down around his neck like a furry collar and noticed Gabrielle. "Why are you all fully dressed?"

"William," Troy looked at the others. "Look, we have something important to do. Just pretend you didn't see us."

"No…" William stood in their way to the entrance. "Three guys in Hufflepuff lost a hundred and fifty points for their house just because they wanted sneak out and go fishing before class one morning. We're already trailing behind on points, and I may not look like much, but I'll knock both you guys cold if you try getting past me."

"I can't believe this." Chad pulled his wand. "Sorry, buddy, but… I got to do this."

"No, wait!" Gabrielle stopped him and started advancing. "William…" She shined and flirted with him in front of Troy. "Look, couldn't you pretend you didn't see us just this once…" She cloyingly slipped up on him. "I mean… I'd be…" Her voice started turning seductive. "Very… appreciative…" Her brown eyes looked into his, her arms held on to his shoulders and her lips met his as Hector covered his own eyes with his furry little paws. Kissed by his secret infatuation, William grinned a bit from her touch and fell backward on to the floor with a light trace of a grin on his face.

"Oh my god…" Troy looked to Chad. "She killed Kenny… I mean, William!"

"He's scared of girls, remember?" Gabrielle reminded them. "We have got to go…" They raced over William sleeping on the floor in the hall to their hidden behind the Fat Lady painting and Hector trying to wake his adult master with tiny slaps to the face. Beyond the hall, Gabrielle, Troy and Chad hastened quietly along the hall looking out for Filtch or Snape patrolling the halls. They just barely missed two other students hiding in an adjacent hall trying to sneak back into Gryffindor House. Watching their ten footsteps heading away on his Marauder's Map, Harry Potter reacted a bit confused and looked to his best friend, Ron Weasley.

"Bloody hell…" Ron looked to Harry. "Where do you think they're going?"

"I don't know." Harry spoke with a soft voice and watched their route on the mystical house map. "But it's late, and I'm not having two adventures in one night!"

At the Great Hall with the moving staircases, the three Gryffindor First Years checked the moving staircases and took the first and best route to the second floor and headed through the hall to the staircase where Taylor and Kelsey waited for them.

"What kept you?" Taylor asked.

"William needed a kiss." Chad mused and confused them. Rolling her eyes, Gabrielle just followed Troy quietly and secretively to the third floor corridor where they passed through more cobwebs, rubbing off dust from the unkempt walls and floor. It was much darker now than the first time they accidentally landed here, but Troy knew the way and the sound ahead did not sound good. It was a good think Kelsey had a rat familiar otherwise she'd have screamed at the two that raced out in front of her, although the sight of them did take Chad aback. The sound from the tower room resembled dull thunder passing over the castle, but mildly hidden behind that noise was the sound of music. Gabrielle gasped as she pushed through next to Troy and noticed the great guard dog asleep with his three ferocious head in peaceful slumber, a modern CD player nearby emitting very slow Classical Music on continuous replay.

"This… is Muffin?" Kelsey looked at the tranquil beast, each massive head resting in its human-sized paws.

"You'd love him when he's awake!" Troy added.

"Troy…" Gabrielle looked through the opening of the exposed trapdoor. All she could see was darkness in the lower tower. "We're too late! Sharpay got through ahead of us."

"I'll go after her." Troy stood up to the mission. "I know her. Maybe I can talk her into giving it up."

"Dude, what about the traps that are supposed to be en route?" Chad stopped him. "You can't do it alone."

"Guys…" Taylor looked at the CD player. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but… when the light goes on, doesn't that mean the battery is going out?" There wasn't any music playing anymore. One set of eyes opened on Muffin and then the other set and they all turned to dinner in the form of five students in front of them. There was suddenly a lot of screaming echoing as Taylor and Chad pushed each other out of the way of the guard-dog giant jaws. Troy pushed Gabrielle into the hole and pulled Kelsey down with him just short of being mangled dog foot. Muffin's deafening roars and barking echoed through the room and bounced off the wood ceiling. The closets immediate way from the brutal behemoth was through the trap door, and that was just barely big enough for one person at a time, but not the giant jaws of a descendant of Cerberus of Tartarus. Deep in the hole, Troy landed on his back next to Kelsey and heard Muffin's deafening roars and furious snapping teeth some height above. It was a good height they had fallen, and he was right. Gabrielle it up the end of her wand as did Kelsey with her own. The inside walls were smooth and covered in moss. What doors or windows into here had been sealed off from the outside and where floors once rested were the empty support holes meant for floor beams. Under them at the ground level was a thick layer of grass, weeds, mulch and vines that had grown up through the holes in the foundation.

"Is this it?" Chad felt Taylor holding on to him. He looked back at her and liked her embrace, but she got disgusted and pushed him off of her.

"Maybe there's a secret tunnel…" Troy held his wand aloft with light at its end. "Let's look for an exit."

"Troy!" Gabrielle felt a wine creeping around her leg under her skirt and another at her waist. Kelsey was swatting at three coiling around her waist and abdomen. Their movement alerted the creeping vines in the grass. Troy felt them around his legs coming up over his body, and Chad started swatting and breaking the leafy tentacle-like vines creeping around him. Kelsey was all but covered in a vine twisted cocoon. Trying to free herself, Gabrielle reached the Troy to save her as Chad freaked out screaming from squeezing his body. Only Taylor relaxed from what was happening.

"Don't fight them!" She called out several times. "Don't fight them!"

"I never ate spinach as a kid, and this is my reward!!!" Troy tried to save Gabrielle.

"They're African Strangling Vines!" Taylor revealed. "They attack only what attacks them. Show them you mean no harm to them and they won't hurt you." She took a deep breath as she was pulled through the grass and moss to vanish underfoot. Troy and Gabrielle looked at each other. Kelsey was covered up as she went limp and took her last breath as she went down.

"Eaten by a salad." Chad tensed his body stiff. "I hate vegetables." Trembling but immobile, Gabrielle closed her eyes as she was swallowed up by the grass, Troy getting pulled down a few seconds after her. Chad was last as the fine hairs on the vines continued to taste him and became disillusioned with him as if it no longer wanted him. The African American Alaskan with the big hair was being pulled down lower and lower into thicker and thicker weeds and mulch. It seemed to get much more dense then he felt nothing. Four feet through, he felt empty space and felt an open funnel of loose grass and seeds raining over him as he fell into the basement and was caught in a slippery tunnel of stone worn smooth by water and time. If it wasn't pitch black, it'd be like the fun slides at the Goonies Amusement Park near Seattle. He finally slid into a subterranean chamber closed off from the Hogwarts catacombs; knocking Troy and Taylor down like pins in a bowling game.

"Ow!!" Taylor hurt as she stood up again. Everyone else had slammed into her for getting sucked through first.

"Thanks, buddy." Troy helped Chad up and checked on Gabrielle.

"Well, that was fun." Chad looked around. Many of them lost their wands in the fall. Kelsey found her glasses and Gabrielle's wand near the drain for the trickle of water from the chute. Once Gabrielle had her wand lit, her friends' wands appeared too scattered near the hole from the chute. They seemed to be in an old storage room with another sealed opening with the bricks from the other side and an opening to her left. It was an archway carved from solid rock descending even deeper under the castle.

"Hey…" Troy stopped her. "I'll go first this time." He wanted to be her hero.

"Does anyone hear crickets?" Kelsey tried adjusting her hair. Drifting behind Troy through the archway, Gabrielle and her friends descended down to another level into a vast chamber with monoliths extending straight up to the foundation above them. It resembled an underground version of Stonehenge, the square columns holding up other monoliths with the domed ceiling over an altar at the center. Upon entering, the entry way closed up behind them, a large section of wall rolling aside and trapping them in as enchanted torches in an outer circle beyond the monoliths burst into flame to light the room. They were descending into the oldest most ancient part of the castle. Chad and Gabrielle turned round looking at the fading frescoes on the walls. Not far from a broom leaing against the wall, Chad noticed an ancient wood door not yet lost to the elements. He tried unlocking it with a spell, but it seemed spell proof. At the altar, Kelsey picked up and read bottles and grimy glass cases.

"I wonder what we do next?" Taylor whirled round noticing loose tiles on the floor. "Maybe… replacing the right tiles in the fresco opens the door." She started studying the fading design.

"I found something." Kelsey called Gabrielle over to the altar. "Almost all of these are unlabeled, but this one says, "Drink Me" and this one says, "Eat Me." Maybe its like "Alice In Wonderland," and we have to drink from the…"

"No!" Troy stopped her from taking the sip. "I'm not risking you bringing one of William's crazy dreams to life Wonderland-style. Let's not do anything until…"

"I found the crickets." Chad was looking straight up. "But they're really butterflies…" He pointed to the center of the ceiling where several dozen small creatures clung to the ceiling. They looked like keys with large wings; some of them were large and good in size. Others seemed long and lengthy. Most of them looked alike.

"One of them probably unlocks the door." Taylor realized.

"That one!!!" Kelsey noticed one that seemed smaller and older than the rest. Clinging to the ceiling above amidst the menageries of gold, silver, bronze and copper keys was one dark key out of steel. There didn't seem to be another one just like it.

"Gabrielle…" Troy took the broom aside and brought it over to her. "Your turn…"

"No, Troy, you do it."

"Come on…" He resisted her. "You're the best broom flier among us. You can catch that key easily!"

"No…" Gabrielle resisted. "Troy, this is your moment." She looked at him grinning. "You get it."

"Give me the broom, I'll get it!" Chad offered.

"I'll get it." Troy looked at him and exhaled deeply. "It can't be that hard." He kicked off and launched to the air as the keys launched and swarmed to elude him. There was suddenly a lot more of them pouring from cracks and holes in the walls and ceiling. That little black key vanished in the confusion. Where there was possibly just barely two hundred flying metal keys, there was multiple hundreds from modern house keys, old rushed car keys with dangling clickers, old iron keys and shining novelty keys, and they were swarming. It looked like every key ever lost by anyone on the planet, and they all swarmed Troy in the air as he flew and dodged them and the obstacles in the chamber. Kelsey dived for cover under the altar, and Gabrielle and Taylor huddled at the door as Troy shot past them chasing the same iron key from before. Swaying and swatting at the keys nearly hitting him, Chad used one of the monoliths to shield himself.

"This is not easy!!!" Troy raced past Chad. Holding on to the broom with his left hand, Troy reached out with his left hand trying to catch the key dodging in and out through his fingers. When it again tried to slip through, he clenched his fingers tight, and the other keys grew upset to see one of their own taken captive.

"Get them through!!!" Troy sailed past after tossing the key to Chad.

"What about you?!"

"I'll be right behind you." Troy felt the angry enchanted pieces of metal pelting him. Chad rushed to unlock the door, pushing against it with his shoulder to get it open. Taylor, Kelsey and Gabrielle rushed through the dark hall behind it as Chad looked back. Troy was beginning his lost approach, he dived down hard pushing down on the broom, the keys right behind him and upon skirting across the floor, he flew straight at the door, jumping off at the last second through the door as Chad slammed it shut, several keys bouncing off the other side or getting stuck into the wood.

"That was close."

"A little…" Troy pulled one last key out of his shirt. "Too close." He and Chad rushed to meet with the girls in another bottom tower chamber. There was endless space above them hading somewhere up to the castle. The center of the room was a round pipe organ with old cracked and discolored keys from an old sailing ship that had wrecked on the cast two hundred years before, its pipes instead of going straight up were going into the floor. The walls were sheathed with the boards of that ship with portholes, shells, cannon holes and seashells imbedded throughout.

"Holy Jack Sparrow!!!" Troy looked at the sight. Another set of torches had alighted to reveal another underground room with yet another secret spell to figure out how to go further into the castle. Kelsey tried to loosen one shell, and Gabrielle tried looking through the portholes for another room, but all she saw were the castle's original walls.

"Well," Chad looked to Taylor. "What do we do?"

"Don't ask me." Taylor was still guessing. "I still though the last one was the frescoes." Kelsey checked to see if the organ still played. She played a B-Flat from the proper key.

"I think I got it." She spoke. "These aren't just ship boards." She gestured over the walls. "They're laid out like musical stanzas. Every hole and object in the path is another note! We start where the boards begin where we entered." She came around the organ and her friends, standing as she played out the musical pattern of the shipboards before her. It sounded like an old sea shanty. The air being pumped into the floor in the right order and sequence triggered another result. Gabrielle and Taylor watched Kelsey playing the keys. Troy felt the floor tremble a bit… and then it moved!

Barely completely the full tune going around the room, Kelsey was coming back up on the other side of the entry way as the floor slid clockwise and lower, following the grooves in the tower as it lowered. Chad was the only one to manage staying on his two feet and just barely as he balanced his weight. Troy held on to Gabrielle, and both Taylor and Kelsey hugged the floor as Chad struggled to stay erect. Like a giant coin pivoting on a massive pivot point, the floor sank lower and lower slowly and gradually, leaving the organ left high up above them until it finally lurched into place and locked in five floors beneath where it now rested.

"Bottom floor… Ladies lingerie…" Chad quipped as if he was the elevator operator of a large convenience store. Troy started laughing, and Gabrielle tried to hide a laugh. Taylor was not amused. She helped Kelsey up as the torches in a room exploded alight to illuminate the way again. A bit overwhelmed by that encounter, Kelsey adjusted her glasses as Chad followed behind her. Once again, Troy showed the way to defend the others. There was a gust of wind pouring through from somewhere; he could feel the breeze, but he could not see where it was coming from. The floor was a steel grate where just barely a foot underneath they could see water pouring through over a cave floor. The room was carved directly out of rock by magic and used to store clay pots containing old forgotten supplies. At the center was what looked like an old baptismal. Constructed out of rock with a sink at the top, the higher structure was made out of metal with two metal rings on top. Troy stepped up to look into the concentric rings, but they were empty. Chad opened one of the pots looking for the Crystal Key, but all he found was soft loose soil preserved from several years before his birth.

"It's dirt." He told the others. "Maybe the Crystal Key is buried in it."

"Or one of the others…" Gabrielle noticed pots sitting on the floor and laying like cordwood in concrete shelves. She looked over the baptismal. "If it was, I wonder this would be here for."

"It's got words on it…" Kelsey saw lettering. "_Quartos elemental uno sebla_…"

"That doesn't sound like a spell." Chad commented.

"It's not…" Taylor stood from checking out the words. "It's Latin. It means: _Let the elements lead the way_."

"What way?" Troy didn't get it. "To the key?" Gabrielle started mumbling under breath thinking to herself. She headed to check the earthen pots.

"The mystical elements…" Kelsey revealed. "Earth, air, fire and water. We put them in the right order and it will open the next door."

"But what's the right order?" Chad looked round to them.

"Taylor…" Gabrielle thought she had an idea based on a trick her foster brother had showed her. "There's something in this soil, but I can't figure it out." She pulled out large handfuls. "What does that smell like?" Taylor came over and sniffed it.

"That's… that's…" She tried remembering. "Brimstone… you know, sulfur."

"That's what I thought!" Gabrielle proved she had a brain and collected much of the soil into one of the lids and raced up to the baptismal. "Troy, would you help me?" She handed the soil for him to hold as she climbed up on to it. "Kelsey, get me some water out of the floor?"

"Okay."

"Gabrielle," Troy lightly chuckled as he watched his favorite girl take the sulfur-laced soil and spread it around inside the lowest of the two round tiers on top. Kelsey lifted up part of the floor and filled another empty pot with water. "What are you doing?"

"Earth, air, fire and water…" Gabrielle took the water from Kelsey as Troy supported her and poured it into the higher circle. She then used her wand to light the sulfur on fire. "Sulfur is the earth…" She explained. "You light it, and it turns into fire, the next element. The fire heats water, the third element which then boils into steam or the fourth element, air." She dropped down to the steel grate again off the fountain. The sulfurous soil burned brightly illuminating the room, bringing the water to boil as the steam from the water condensed on top and started dripping down. Down in the baptismal, the sink started collecting the dripping water, but it must have been enchanted. The few drops welled into much more water than was turning to steam. As all the water started dripping down, the sink grew heavy… dipping down inside the structure and filling up with even more water from deep under the lake. As the sink lowered, a counterweight was released and another door slowly began sliding open. Gabrielle started grinning at what she had done, and Troy hugged her... Chad cheered as the girls applauded their luck.

"Add more water on top…" Gabrielle was getting too sure of herself. "We don't want it closing before it…" She hurried forward ahead of Troy and triggered another counterweight. Stepping from the grate into a tunnel, her foot pressed down a loose tile. Where one stone door rolled aside, another one started lowering to replace it. Troy started rushing to pull her out, but Chad was closer. He tried to stop the door by catching it and pushing it up, placing his shoulder underneath to stop it, but it was too heavy…. Way too heavy.

"Gabrielle!!!" He tried saving her. "Get out… get out of there!!!" He was getting crushed as he tried saving her.

"There's not enough room!" The brunette sorceress screamed. Chad was taking up too much space under it. Troy started pushing up against it trying to stop it and get his wand out to use against it, but Kelsey and Taylor had their wands out. The two of them tried unsealing it; both of them enchanting, "_Wingardium Leviosa_…" together in and out of sync, but the stone was either too heavy for their level of mastery or it was spell proof. Driven to his knees trying to keep from losing Gabrielle, Chad felt his back being snapped in two. His best friend or his favorite girl, Troy let go of the door and pulled Chad out from under the stone slab crashing done. It was the only way. Gabrielle might have been lost to them, but at least both she and Chad were alive. Troy hugged Chad like his brother; Chad hugged him back sorry for his loss. Kelsey gasped in shock at what happened. Behind her, the closing door had opened another one. They looked at it and back to the opening they had just lost.

"If that's the right door…" Tears streamed down Kelsey's face. "Where did we just lose Gabrielle?"

"Guys!" Troy stood holding his head upset. "We can't leave her in there. We have got to get her out!"

"Wait…" Taylor picked up a few leaves in the other doorway. "These are from the African Strangler. This has got to be the shortcut back to the third floor…"

"Then that means…" Chad looked back distraught. "Gabrielle is stuck facing Sharpay on her own!"


	13. Chapter 13

13

"Troy?" Gabrielle struck and knocked at the wall with the flat of her hand. "Chad?" She felt around for an opening and looked around as her eyes accustomed to the extreme darkness. She seemed to be in the catacombs under the foundations of Hogwarts, maybe as far as a hundred feet underground. All she had was a vestige of light from around the corner. The end of her wand illuminated and she used it to light the way. She was in a long corridor only about three feet wide, empty crypts about every so feet for the burial and entombment of the dead. A veil of spider webs blocked her path and she pulled it down as she headed into the light. The side passage seemed to lead into a room at the far end. She slowly inched along the way and subsequently found herself into a round chamber resembling a small amphitheater lit by torches with four stairways leading up into darkened passageways. Directly before her was the Mirror of Yensid resting in an alcove of some importance. It was surrounded by an audience of levels displaying cups of every metal, style and substance sitting side by side with crystals both large and small. She found geodes and crystal statues, cups of gold and bronze. There were large crystals resting on angles and a few with flattened surfaces to rest upon. Here and there was a rogue wooden statue less than a foot high. This looked like it could be the Hogwart vault used to hide away every object of importance to Hogwarts history. If Sharpay was here, she was nearby. Gabrielle turned round once and noticed a crystal statue and a sparkling silver goblet sparkling with diamonds and blue, green and red gems. This room was a treasure hunter's dream. It made her feel like a princess to be in their presence. A soft smile came to her face as she admired one of the crystal objects, but as she turned around, she realized she was not alone. A cloaked and hooded figure came from the passageway before her and startled her. She stood her ground as her nemesis reached to pull back her hood to reveal her identity.

"Alex?!" Gabrielle recognized her cousin. "But that's… What are you doing in Hogwarts?"

"There's a secret tunnel under the school from Honeyduke's Candy Shop." Alex confessed. "I heard about it from my new best friend, Sharpay. I've been telling her a lot about you, Gabrielle, and she's got plans for you."

"But…" Gabrielle shook her head confused as Alex strutted threateningly to the mirror. "You're not supposed to be here. You're supposed to be at Wiz-Tech! I'm so confused."

"What's there to be confused about?" Alex looked back to her cousin. "I hate your guts! My entire life, all I ever hear is: "Alex, why can't you be more like Gabrielle?" "Alex, why can't you stay out of trouble like Gabrielle?" "Alex, why can't you wear underwear like Gabrielle?" All I hear is Gabrielle! Gabrielle! Gabrielle!!!" Alex screamed the name over and over trying to forget it, hissing under breath, clenching her teeth into a vicious snarl and her eyes ablaze with furious hostility then slowly and gradually abating her temper. Gabrielle looked at her and trembled.

"But… but…" Gabrielle shuddered with fear and backed away from her. "But we talked about boys, and went to the mall with Harper, and looked at the stars from the balcony…"

"I also pushed you off the balcony seventeen times, and you blamed yourself seventeen times!" Alex hissed in her cousin's face. "Gabrielle, you are not that clumsy!!" She turned away rather than watch her emotional cousin crying. "But then I heard about this theory about other worlds where different versions of myself existed and how there was this mirror that looked into other them, and I realized there had to be a world where you didn't exist! The problem was… it was located here at Hogwarts and the only way I was going to see it was to get transferred from Wiz-Tech to Hogwarts, but then you got a full tuition to Hogwarts and I had to get it, but no!" Alex pushed Gabrielle off her feet and stood over her gloating. "You just had to take it! You see, my annoyingly little cousin, I stared into the mirror and I finally found the person I'm supposed to be." She turned and pressed her face obsessed to the mirror. "Her name's Selena Gomez, and she's this big time actress and singer in another universe. She's got millions of fans and movie stars for friends. I'm going to replace her, and take over her life. They'll all love me instead, but to do it, I need the Crystal Key!!"

"So, it was you who broke into Gringotts…" Gabrielle realized. "You did it when you skipped those classes at Wiz-Tech to come here. You gave Hagrid that dragon egg to learn how to get past Muffin. Sharpay helped you, didn't she?"

"She sure did." Alex grinned at that accomplishment. "She helped me elude Snape, showed me the secret shortcut down here and helped me get expelled from Wiz-Tech. I had to blow up half of that stinking school until they finally expelled me!" She paused with a satisfied grin. "Gabrielle, here's your chance to help me. Where's the Crystal Key?!"

"I don't know!" Gabrielle cried out with tears in her eyes.

"Don't give me that!" Alex yelled at her. "Sharpay said you knew exactly where it was! Now, where is it?!!!" She sounded obsessed and psychotic.

"Alex," Gabrielle was crying with large tears running down her fragile face. "You're scaring me!"

"Oh, I'm sorry, Gabrielle…" Alex suddenly sounded remorseful. "I'm sorry, let me help you up…" Gabrielle extended her hand to her cousin to be lifted up off the floor, but Alex instead spun her round by the arm and held her by the neck, squeezing her throat and windpipe as they both stood before the Mirror of Yensid looking at their reflections. Her cousin started choking for air and clawing at her neck for relief. Alex had gone mad. She was desperate to find that mystical object. "Where is that key?!!!" She looked at her face in the mirror as her cousin's face turned red. Behind her, everything appeared dark and lackluster in shadow but for one crystal with a flat bottom. It was glowing with a light brighter than anything else in the room. Both of them noticed it and realized what it had to be.

Tossing her cousin aside, Alex spun around and raced to the crystal and took it up in her hands. It was barely bigger than a baseball, and there was a small hollow spot in the bottom of it. Resembled a large diamond, she took it up and advanced on the mirror. Crying her eyes out on the floor, Gabrielle looked up as Alex pressed the flat of the crystal to the mirror, the glass glistening like reflective silver liquid reflecting her cousin in front of it. Laughing giddily, Alex jumped up and down like a little girl and started pushing her way through the mirror. Looking around once, Gabrielle realized she had to get her back and suddenly found her spirit renewed with a second wind. Clenching her teeth, she leapt to her feet and reached through the mirror to grab Alex around the waist and bring her back…

In another reality with a not-so-evil Alex Russo…

"Okay…" Jerry Russo stood in the secret wizard's lair of his Waverly Place sandwich shop with his three kids. His son, Justin, was drawing science-fiction scenes in his notebook, and his younger son, Max played a palm-held video game. At the end of the sofa, the Alex of this reality had shorter hair and was reading a fashion catalog as her father tried to teach them wizardry.

"A-hem…" Jerry tried to keep their attention. "Today, I'd like to show you kids some basic transportation spells. These are very useful for when you can't get a taxi or your wife wants you to do disgusting chores. Now, who did their required reading last night?"

The door to the portal in the lair crashed open from two figures crashing through it, and the kids jumped to attention. Jerry watched what looked like a large gem skidding across his floor and another copy of his daughter pulling the hair out of another girl. He looked to one Alex and then to the other. What was another boring magic lesson was getting to be interesting. Gabrielle screamed as Alex pulled a chunk of her hair out then pushed her against the sarcophagus in the room. Justin looked confused to see two copies of his sister. Max was laughing and cheering on the fight.

"Melissa?" Alex thought her counterpart was a clone of herself she had known. "Is that you?"

"Crap and a half!" Evil Alex kicked Gabrielle to the floor and looked around the lair. "Wrong stinking world!!" She punched the other Alex to the face and pushed her out of the way looking for the Crystal Key on the floor. She pushed Justin out of the way and flipped over the sofa looking for it.

"Uncle Jerry!" Holding her chest, Gabrielle forced herself to stand. "Don't let her get that key!!"

"Uncle Jerry?" Jerry reacted confused. "Do I know you?"

"Is this what you're looking for?" Max found it behind a trunk. Evil Alex and Gabrielle looked at ach other and lunged after their extra-dimensional cousin. Max tossed it up and dived out of the way as the two feuding females dived for it. Feeling it on the tip of her fingers, Gabrielle tried to hold on to it, but it spun a bit in the air as Alex reached for it. Upset about getting punched, the other Alex started fighting her evil counterpart. The Crystal Key meanwhile hit a chair in the entranceway and rolled over the edge for a more cushioned landing.

"Dad," Justin stood confused with his arms folded before his chest. "Where'd other Alex and that girl come from?"

"I don't know…" Jerry pulled Max out of the way. "I didn't do my homework either."

"_Opponent Retardus_!!!" Evil Alex sent her the other Alex of this world flying across the room and smashing into the wall then scrambled to catch up with Gabrielle. In the outer restaurant, Gabrielle skidded to a stop to meet her aunt making sandwiches in the world, but then Evil Alex crashed into her on purpose and pulled her back by the hair screaming. Reacting confused and unprepared, Theresa and the three customers looked up to see the two girls fighting for the large crystal just as Alex tripped Gabrielle from behind and grabbed the Crystal Key laughing. Before Theresa could stop the other girl beating up her daughter, Gabrielle sprung up chasing her cousin and pursued her up into the loft upstairs.

"Where'd Michayla go to?" Her hair mussed and her clothes torn, Alex raced from out of the lair.

"Up… stairs?" Theresa reacted confused.

"No one punches me in the face and gets away with it!!!" Alex raced up the stairs in the restaurant to catch up with the other two. As she reached the top, her duplicate pressed the crystal to the mirror on the far wall and was pushing her way into it. The other girl raced after her and tried pulling her back, the mirror sloshing and stirring like liquid silver just before they were both pulled into it. Watching the whole spectacle, Alex skidded to a stop just a few feet from joining them.

"Okay…" She adjusted her ripped top and blew her hair out of her eyes. "Something tells me that wasn't Michayla…"

Yet another reality…

Corrie Willows looked a lot like Gabrielle Russo, and her best friend, Mary-Margaret Dawson, looked a lot like Taylor McKessie. They were both friends of Maddie Fitzpatrick, the cute and attractive hard-working candy girl of the Tipton Hotel whose only similarity to Sharpay Evans was her looks. They entered the hotel lobby just past Zack and Cody Martin going out and headed straight to Maddie reading her Harry Potter book.

"Maddie, look at this…" Corrie laid the paper out. "There's been another sighting of Super-Blonde!"

"Really?" Maddie sounded skeptical. "And who are they saying she looks like now?"

"Jessica Simpson."

"Maddie…" Mary-Margaret actually suspected the girl flying around Boston in the Supergirl costume was really Maddie, but she couldn't prove it. "Are you sure there's anything you want to tell us?"

"Like what?" Maddie reacted or pretended to be ignorant.

"Another Jessica Simpson…" Corrie was sometimes a bit slow. "It be so cool if a girl that looked just like me appeared with special powers." At that moment, hotel maintenance man Arwin Hawkhauser was wheeling a partially unwrapped mirror to replace the one Zack and Cody had shattered in the Grand Hallway of the hotel, but it suddenly felt heavy and Gabrielle Russo rolled from out of it with the Crystal Key sliding across the floor from her left hand. Climbing over her from the mirror in this seemingly unending quarrel, Alex crawled over her hated cousin after the sliding crystal shooting between the legs of London Tipton.

"It's mine!!" London dived for it.

"Not if I can help it!!!" Alex pulled out her wand. "_Portento Carranza_!!!" She hissed and turned London into a small yipping black poodle. Hotel manager Marion Moseby screamed at the sight of that transformation. Gabrielle meanwhile lifted herself to her feet right in front of Corrie and noticed how much they looked alike, but they had no time to talk. The Hogwarts sweetheart pulled out her wand before Maddie and Mary-Margaret watching in disbelief.

"_Wingardium Levoisa_!!!" She levitated the Crystal Key just as Alex grasped empty air, the mystical key between worlds flying up into the air for herself to catch it. "_Asportanto reversa_!!!" She changed London back into a human being. Evil Alex hissed with her teeth together and eyes aflame at her hated cousin.

"_Rictusempra_!!!" Alex screamed another incantation, and the two sofas in the lobby flew up into the air with people falling off them. They smashed into the crystal chandelier as Gabrielle looked straight up ready to be crushed underneath, but something raced across the lobby and pulled her out of the way. She was there one minute and gone the next. Mary-Margaret noticed Maddie had suddenly vanished at the same time. The two sofas and chandelier came crashing down right where Gabrielle once stood. Restored to normal, London Tipton scrambled out of the mystical war zone confused and scared for her life with Mr. Moseby ready to collect her.

"Gabrielle, I want that crystal!!!" Growing more hostile by the minute, Alex screamed through the alerted hotel lobby for her cousin as Gabrielle and Maddie popped up from behind the potted plants near the front entrance. "_Poltergeista_!!!" Gabrielle and Maddie looked at each other briefly as allies as Alex levitated the shattered concierge's desk into a horde of flying objects and debris hurling themselves at her. Gabrielle shielded Maddie and extended her wand.

"_Protectus patronum_!!!" A shield formed from her wand around her and Maddie as the shattered desk struck and turned into useless splinters flying around them. There was something about Maddie that made her special. She could not get hurt, but Gabrielle had no time to figure that out.

"You've got to get her out of here before she kills someone." Maddie told her.

"I know." Gabrielle heard Alex's voice screeching impatiently as her hated cousin matched her spell for spell. The demented sorceress looked around the terrorized lobby of scared hotel guests and looked straight toward Corrie, her cousin's counterpart in the reality. She lifted her wand at her.

"_Rictusempra_!!!" She levitated the entire candy corner up behind Corrie to crush her in effigy. The girl looked up in terrified fear as the crushed and stirring counter and candy rose up inside a small tornado off the lobby floor, but something grabbed her and pulled her out of the way, she skidded to the floor twenty feet into the gallery from the wreckage smashing into the floor.

"What… how?" She looked up and noticed Maddie near her. "Maddie?? You saved my life!!"

"Yeah, I did…" Maddie's face and body turned away from her best friend, holding a rip in her hotel uniform to hide the big red "S" on the costume under her clothes.

"Give me that key, Gabrielle!!!" Alex chased her cousin from the lobby. The Hogwarts cutie dashed away from her cousin into the ladies room trying to lead Alex back to Hogwarts to be punished. She pressed the key's flat edge to ladies room mirror as it turned into a portal. Alex was right behind her.

The previous reality somewhere near Albuquerque….

"So, Gabrielle…" Taylor McKessie and Gabrielle Montez were students at East High School. "Is Troy taking you to the Winter Formal?"

"I think so… as long as nothing funny happens." Gabrielle looked up as they headed to their regular table in the cafeteria where Kelsey was waving them over. As they strided across the floor, a large crystal slid across the floor on its flat surface in front of then and across the lower cafeteria from the nearby ladies room out in the hall. At another table, the object attracted the attention of non-wizard Sharpay Evans from talking on her cell phone. She didn't know what it was, but she wanted it.

"Gotta go, mom! The biggest diamond I've ever seen just slid by me!!!" She turned off her phone and raced after it bouncing under the chairs and tables.

"Hey!" Senior Chloe Harridge screamed from the hallway. "There's two girls beating the crap out of each other in the bathroom!!" Alex raced out of the bathroom first followed by Gabrielle.

"You've got to be kidding me!!!" Alex screamed. "_Poltergeista_!!!" She enchanted the janitor's trolley to explode as cleaning supplies, mops and brooms exploded everywhere. Gabrielle ducked and grabbed the closest broom out of the air, clenching it tightly and riding it across the room over her counterpart's head trying to get the key ahead of Alex. Before them both, the Sharpay of this world found the key and lifted it up admiring it just as Alex reached her.

"If there's one thing I don't need, it's another Sharpay!!!" Alex clobbered her with a food tray over the head then plucked the crystal out of the air as Sharpay dropped, but Gabrielle flew over them both and clutched it to herself. Holding the crystal to her chest, she pulled the broom up to the air and soared up to the second floor from the cafeteria. Flying through the school to find another mirror, a door opened in front of her and knocked her out of the air.

"What the?" Drama teacher Mrs. Darbus adjusted her glasses as the girl and broom were knocked from the air. "Who?" She thought she knew the girl. "Miss Montez, what's going on here?" Her long cape flapping like a set of huge black wings, Alex was flying after her cousin and coming on her own broom toward them. The air briefly knocked out of her, Gabrielle quickly recollected the Crystal Key and jumped the broom again to shoot past Alex into the other direction. Looking behind her, the Waverly Place villainess smashed into the upstairs trophy case in front of her, a photo of basketball star Troy Bolton bouncing off her head. Mrs. Darbus meanwhile stood completely confused by what she had seen.

"Gabrielle," Troy and Chad entered the confused and alarmed East High School cafeteria with the rest of the basketball players. "What's going on? Someone said you were flying on a broom?"

"It wasn't me, Troy!!!" Gabrielle was confused and hysterical. "It was another girl that looked exactly like me!!!"

"Here's she comes again!!!" Ryan Evans was fanning his sister as the mystical Gabrielle came soaring back on her broom being chased by Alex. Pushing her broom down, Gabrielle shot through the watching students and jumped to her feet clutching the Crystal Key coming right at them. Alex getting closer and closer, she was racing back to the ladies restroom but to do so, she had to race right between her counterpart and Troy's.

"Hey!!" Troy stopped her by rushing into her way. "Who are you?"

"In a hurry!!!" She kissed him and spun him around to get into the bathroom with them right behind. As her friends' counterparts watched, she pressed the crystal to the mirror and made it turn into liquid glass then climbed over the counter and through it. Alex charged through them to kill her cousin.

"Give me that key, Gabrielle!!!!" Alex screamed as the mirror sloshed and undulated from her going through it then calmed to solid glass. Taylor put her hand to it, but it was solid again.

"Whoa!" Taylor reacted from that magic trick.

"What is in the water in this place?!" Chad couldn't believe it.

Still yet another school in still yet another reality…

"Now…" Professor Charles Xavier was a rather brilliant teacher confined to a wheelchair who taught American Literature to the special children of his school for the gifted. "We were discussing the book, _For Whom The Bells Tolls_. Now, who can give me some insight into the main character?" He spoke softly and grandfatherly within his Westchester County estate. Student Kitty Pryde immediately raised her hand while right next to her, young Corrie Willows suddenly reacted from a vision of her favorite teacher getting hurt. Jumping to her feet, she rushed to save him.

"Professor!!!" She wheeled his chair right out of the way of the girls coming out of the reflection in the front windows. The twelve students sitting on the floor scattered as Gabrielle charged forth lost and confused from her third world. Gritting her teeth out of hostility, Alex clotheslined her cousin with a movement to the neck as her counterpart in this world, Gwen Alvarado, jumped to stop her.

"What are you looking at?!!!" She tried to punch her to the face, but Gwen's mutant strength made her as hard as steel. For Alex, it was like breaking her fist on solid concrete. As she reacted from smashing her fingers, the other young mutant children ganged up on her. Coughing and choking, Gabrielle struggled to raise to her feet, but someone with powers less than her own was reading her mind. She looked to the bald teacher in the wheelchair.

"Gabrielle…" Xavier was speaking to her telepathically. "The key you are looking for slid under the table in the front hall. Get it while you can." Gabrielle and the kind humanitarian exchanged a lifetime of thoughts in that moment, but Alex was seething with rage. She wanted that key!!!

"_Trinorma dredrae_!!!" Alex sent the class flying off her and into the walls and took off after her cousin. Clutching the crystal, Gabrielle looked briefly at her and raced past teacher Ororo Munroe whose own powers unique to this reality allowed her to summon and control the elements of storm. Her white hair drifting in the breeze being whipped up, she conjured a torrent of air that blew Alex into the wrong direction. The young girl was knocked off her feet and backward by the gust of air, but she still had her wand to use against this experienced mutant.

"_Elemental transformus_!!!" Pressing the tip of her wand to the floor, she turned the floor to quicksand and both Ororo and Alex fell through the floor, seven feet of solid cement and crashed into the concrete floor of the sub-basement. Having received the telepathic messages of their mentor, Scott Summers and the loner named Logan spun round to the attack. Alex looked up just barely as an optic blast from Scott's eyes blasted her off her feet. Sharp claws sprung from Logan's hands.

"Scott, becareful!!" Ororo screamed. "She knows magic!!!"

"_Terminus projectra_!!!" Alex blasted the Jason Marsden lookalike off his feet with a projectile blast of energy but raised her eyebrow to the other guy for looking like Hugh Jackman. "Nice claws…" He tried to strike her, but she levitated him and used her wand to throw him toward Ororo. Exhausted and tired, Gabrielle reached for the Crystal Key near her as Alex took it from her.

"Once again, you see…" Alex looked down on her. "There is nothing you can possess that I can't take away."

"Bobby, stop her!!!" Bobby Drake and the girl known as Rogue came running after her; Drake was trying to freeze the wily sorceress with his temperature-based powers, but Alex used her wand to enchant her own breath and blow it back on him. At her feet, Gabrielle grabbed Alex's foot to stop her, but Alex stomped her arm with her other foot. She quickly dashed into the nearest room and slammed the door. It looked like an medical room with an examination table and a lot of medical equipment and supplies, but best of all there was a small mirror above the scale just big enough for her to get through. A brief spell to wield the door shut, she raced to escape to the next world as Logan's claws started carving open an entrance way.

"Not fast enough…" Alex placed the mirror on the floor and started pushing through it. By time the clawed mutant had the opening carved, she was almost completely gone from that world with Gabrielle now rushing to catch up to her. She was getting away! In the next world, Alex pushed forward from a make-up table. On the other wall was a movie poster for "Princess Protection Program" and another for "Wizards of Waverly Place: The Movie" Posters of herself with movie stars littered the walls. This was it! She found it! Gabrielle could have the key now! Alex began laughing to realize she was home!

"Yes!!!" She started entering this world laughing. "Yes!!! Yes!!! I'm home!!!" Something stopped her. Gabrielle's arm reached around her and pulling her back.

"Oh no, you don't!!" Alex clutched the end of the table. "Keep the key! I'm home now!!! Let me go!!!" There was someone at the door of this dressing room. Selena Gomez started to enter but was stopped by a question from David Heinrie. Gritting her teeth, Alex clutched at the table pulling herself free. How in the world could Gabrielle hold on to her like this, and then she realized the truth, back at Hogwarts, Troy and Chad was holding on to her!!!

"Hold on to her!!!" Troy called to her from the Hogwarts catacombs. He and Chad were in their world leaning into the mirror, Alex was half out of another mirror in another reality and Gabrielle was in between both worlds. They had watched her chasing Gabrielle from world to world in the mirror waiting for it to open for them and when Alex used it again, Troy reached forward to grab Gabrielle, and Gabrielle grabbed Alex at that moment. Kicking and screaming, Alex was moments upon reaching her actress counterpart if only her co-star would just stop talking!!!

"No!!!" Alex tried pulling herself forward. "I ain't going back!!! Let me go!!! You can't make me go back!!!" Gabrielle was clutching her tight around the shoulders, Troy grabbing Gabrielle around the waist. Either the table, Alex's grasp or Troy and Chad's grip on Gabrielle was about to give up.

"I'm not going…" Alex was pulling herself and her cousin forward into this bold new reality slowly as Troy and Chad were pulled deeper into the Mirror of Yensid. She saw a tabloid magazine linking her to the Jonas Brothers, a magazine telling the story of Selena Gomez and a compact music disc with her face on it. Wrapping her moment of dialogue, Selena was about to enter the room. Reaching to take the Selena Gomez CD with her right hand, Alex was jerked back suddenly into the mirror…

"Gabrielle?" Troy and Chad crashed into the floor of the Hogwarts vault. "Gabrielle?" She was nowhere to be seen. They had lost the both of them in the mirror!

Upstairs in one of the classrooms, Gabrielle and Alex spilled from the mirror on the wardrobe in the Defense of the Dark Arts Class. Entering the room reading a book, Professor Lupin looked up as the two young ladies hit the floor; the Crystal Key sliding over to him to be picked up. Screaming her head off disgusted and angry at the world, Alex punched her cousin in the face several times trying to kill her out of revenge then noticed Professor Lupin with the Crystal Key. She dropped Gabrielle to get it.

"Give me the key!!!" She ordered him with her wand drawn.

"Young lady…" Lupin was not scared of her. "That is not how you speak to your elders."

"Alex!!!" Her nose bleeding, her left eye swollen shut and face bruised, Gabrielle coughed, trembled from her wretched and frail pain-filled body and reached up with a deep breath, opening the wardrobe and ducking out of the way. The boggart raced out to meet Alex taking the form of her worst fear… the skull-faced specter of death known variously as the Grim Reaper, the ferryman of the Styx and the harbinger of the end. It appeared in the guise of Thanatos, the Greek angel of death in long tattered robes pulling out the symbol of human mortality, the scythe! Alex screamed at the sight of it and dropped her wand out of fright.

"_Expecto Patronum_!!!" Professor Lupin cast it back into the wardrobe with a spell as Alex screamed and reverted into a little girl. Forgetting about her, the kind teacher rushed over to help Gabrielle.

"Well done, Miss Russo… Ten points, Gryffindor…" He cradled the fragile and tired girl in his lap, the two of them looking over to Alex… crying and hysterical like a tiny little girl hiding under one of the classroom tables like a scared little diva knowing she was in trouble...


	14. Chapter 14

14

Thirteen-year-old Alexandra Deianeira Russo was going to be the youngest girl ever sent to Azkaban Prison…

Stripped of her powers, the Ministry of Magic and the Wizard's Council debated back and forth just how to punish her. They were the highest board of experienced wizards in the secret magic community, a bit more obscure than the Free Masons or the Knights Templar. As they debated and examined the facts, they wondered just how to punish and sentence the Russo girl. She just might likely be sent to Azkaban for illegal breaking of the interdimensional laws, two counts of theft, conspiracy, attempted murder of her own cousin, using her magic in public as a minor… although that could be tossed out since it only occurred in three other different realities. No one wanted to see a girl that young in Azkaban, and Jerry Russo pleaded on behalf of his daughter, screaming that he still loved her and to have mercy on her, but the one thing working against Alex was a long history back to six-years old of being mean, nasty, lazy, selfish and corrupt. Things started really turning bad when her own brother, Justin Herschel Russo, wanted to help support the prosecution!

A night and day under Madame Pomfrey, and Gabrielle was back to full health and had her looks back. During her convalescence, she listened to the Selena Gomez CD that her cousin had brought over and liked it. She kind of wished that girl was the cousin she really had. Her nose had been broken by Alex, and after it had healed, it whistled a bit at times; her back was going to bother her for a short while, but other than that, she was back to her full vitality. In the fourth floor ladies room, the ghost of Moaning Myrtle sat above the sinks as Gabrielle washed up alongside Taylor, Kelsey and several other girls for the Graduation Party in the Assembly Hall. Perfect hair, hits of perfume, the ideal dress… Gabrielle could only think of Troy standing and waiting for her downstairs.

"How can you stand there…" Taylor stood in Gabrielle's reflection. "After that cousin of yours tried to kill you and exile you in another reality?"

"That wasn't the Alex I grew up with." The Waverly sorceress looked to Taylor's image in the mirror. "Despite what she did, I forgive her. Alex still is and will always be my favorite and only sister. I can't just forget years of happy memories over one horrible incident. Sisters fight…"

"She tried to kill you." Kelsey reminded her.

"Alex could never kill me…" Gabrielle sprayed more perfume on herself.

"You're too good a person, Gabrielle." Taylor hugged her. "But…" She recalled something from the story Gabrielle had told from the Hogwarts Vault. "What do you think she meant when she said Sharpay had something planned for you?"

"I don't know…" The brunette ingénue adjusted her hair again. "After all, if Sharpay wasn't after the Crystal Key, what was she doing with Professor Lupin's books of potions? And why would Professor Snape accuse her of stealing ingredients if she wasn't?"

"Well,…" Kelsey tried to think.

"Don't worry about it." Taylor grinned that grin of all knowing that made her seem more mature. "It's all over. Look, it's the end of year, you're with one of the hottest guys in class and you look hot. Don't worry about someone as insignificant as Sharpay."

"I like your dress." Kelsey looked cute too. "It's much nicer than the other one you picked out."

"I don't know what happened to that one." Gabrielle turned round in her white dress. "I know I had it after it arrived in the Assembly Hall… but I lost it."

"I'm sure we'll find whoever took it wearing it in the Assembly Hall." Taylor was ready to head to the party downstairs.

"Have fun, ladies…" Moaning Myrtle waved them good-bye with her ghostly sepulchral voice. "Don't forget your flowers."

"Flowers…" Kelsey checked on hers and Gabrielle reached to adjust hers, but she didn't have it. She looked back and around. "My corsage." She didn't have it. "I left the corsage Troy gave me in Gryffindor Hall; I have to run back for it. Taylor, will you tell Troy I'll be right down."

"I'm sure he'll wait." Taylor went off to catch up with Chad, and Kelsey went off the meet Ryan in the other direction. Her feet tapping out across the floor, Gabrielle headed back to the portrait of the Fat Lady concealing their house and gave the secret password to enter past the talking painting.

"Password?"

"Pineapple jacks." Gabrielle spoke and the Fat Lady gestured to her frame swinging aside to reveal the doorway behind it. Inside the empty common room, the corsage was on the arm of the sofa where she had left it after getting it. She felt a bit foolish for forgetting it, but there was just so much going on since the trouble with Alex. A moment to pin it to her white dress and she was racing to meet Troy. Back out into the hallway, she hastened her step with a light jaunt toward the Great Hall and started down the staircase just coming into place adjacent to the direct route to the assembly hall. As she reached the staircase leading out of the Great Hall, she descended down to meet Lily Finnerty of Slitherin Hall coming from the Game Room carrying a tray of pastries.

"Well, hey there, Gabrielle!!!" She seemed pleasant for once. "Fancy meeting you here! I was just bringing these to add to the refreshment table in the Assembly Hall." She looked around once and again. "They're from a old Finnerty family recipe. Like to try one?"

"They look nice." Gabrielle looked down to fifty cookie-sized cakes and reached to take one of the gooey chocolate pastries. She chose the one from the corner a bit smaller than the rest. Lily grinned secretly as Gabrielle true to her character sampled one of the pastries and took a deep bite. "It's chewy and sweet." She spoke. "I can really taste the cinnamon and…" Her eyes rolled back sleepily, her body swayed a bit and she slumped to her feet as Sharpay and Tawni came out to deal with her.

"_Mindus perendi_!!!" Lily seemingly folded up the silver tray and chocolate pastries into nothingness, and Sharpay reached down over Gabrielle to pluck a hair from her head.

"Lily, stick her in the housekeeping closet for a white." Sharpay reached out. "Tawni, polyjuice potion." Tawni gave her the potion they had created from Lupin's book and Snape's ingredients. As Lily dragged Gabrielle into the closet, Sharpay dropped the hair into the potion and stirred it in.

"In a minute, Troy Boyden's going to be mine…" She grinned to her friends. "And by time I'm through with him, he'll be begging to come back to me. Cheers." She toasted her friends and lifted the potion to her lips, sipping it at first then quickly gagging and thrusting the goblet containing it back to Tawni. "Oh god!!! I thought I told you to do something about the taste!!"

"I did!" Tawni insisted. "I mixed it with a Diet Coke!"

"I hope that doesn't affect the potion." Lily wondered.

"What?!!!" Sharpay looked at them as her skin started creeping and crawling. She looked large bumps swelling and popping on her hands. From inside her body, she felt a large gas bubble in her stomach coming up as she burped a little, but that wasn't anything close to what was actually happening to her. From her head, Lily and Tawni watched as Sharpay's blonde hair seemed to fill with color pouring into it from her head. Her bosom filled out remarkably, then relaxed just as the rest of her clothing started falling loose. The blonde one felt her bones shrinking, her skin and internal organs shrinking as she transformed. The sensation was like being filled with ants crawling all over her, but it also started going away and she felt good again. In fact, she started feeling better than ever!

"Well?" She looked to her friends. Tawni quickly pulled her mirror out, and as Sharpay looked into it, she saw Gabrielle's surprised face looking back!

"Yes! Yes! Yes!!!" She began giggling and dancing around on the spot. "Excellent!!! Get me her black dress! I can't leave Troy waiting."

Elsewhere...

"Where's Gabrielle?" Troy asked. The tables in the Assembly Hall had been mystically conjured out for the Graduation Party. Students from all houses were dancing with each other. Looking for Gabrielle, Troy walked up to Chad dancing with Taylor and got their attention. "She promised to be here ten minutes ago."

"Troy, relax…" Taylor tried to alleviate his feelings. "She went back to get her corsage. She'll be right here."

"Yeah…" Chad didn't care much for the slow chamber music he and the others had to dance to, but Taylor liked it and he wanted to spare offending her. "Look, she'll be right… look, there she is!" He pointed to Gabrielle at the entrance arriving between Lily and Tawni. Taylor looked again suspiciously. She was wearing the missing black dress and the corsage.

"What's she doing with those two?" She wondered as Gabrielle saw them as lit up excitedly. She sent off Tawni and Lily as if they obeyed her and then came skipping up excitedly up to Troy in his tux, grabbing him around the chest and giggling as if she owned him.

"Hi, Troy!" She was hysterically happy to be near him.

"Hey…" He looked happy to be seeing her as Taylor walked around Gabrielle looking her over. "You found the corsage. Want to dance?"

"Forever!" Her eyes rounding with anticipation, Gabrielle beamed happily as Troy took her by the waist and started to sway her out among all the other students, but Chad came around in his tux and stopped them.

"Gabrielle…" He stopped them. "I got an owl from my dad at the Ministry of Magic. I'm afraid Alex got twenty-five years at Azkaban for stealing the Crystal Key, using it and trying to kill you."

"Don't care." Gabrielle responded back. "She can rot for all I care!"

"What?!" Taylor reacted and knew something was very wrong. That was not what she had said less than ten minutes ago. Gabrielle just grabbed Troy back harder and tugged him confused out on to the dance floor. Spinning on her heel in her blue dress, Taylor tugged Chad across as well toward the entrance.

"Follow me!" She told him. "Something is really wrong here."


	15. Chapter 15

15

Coming from Hufflepuff Hall, Ryan Evans was leading Kelsey graciously down the staircase from the Grand Hall. She looked incredible with her hair down in that pink dress. She was a good friend, and hopefully something much more. Kelsey thought he looked good in his blue tuxedo, but she herself was fussing with the wrap around her shoulders. It was supposed to go with the dress, but she wasn't used to it.

"Why don't you take that back to the Common Room?" Ryan suggested. "You shouldn't have to fuss with it all night."

"I don't want to go all the back there and back again." Kelsey reacted just a bit awkward. "I'll just hold on to it."

"I got an idea…" Ryan looked round. "Give it to me, and I'll tuck it into the housekeeping closet over here, and we'll pick it up on the way back."

"Okay…" Kelsey liked that idea, but as she handed Ryan her wrap, she noticed Gabrielle's owl, Maddie, perched on the grandfather clock opposite the closet door and making a mournful crying noise. It was staring at the door and weeping as if her mistress was in trouble.

"That's Maddie." Kelsey turned and looked at her. "What's she doing here? She's supposed to be in the owlry." At the same time, Taylor and Chad noticed them after coming from another corridor and came up to join them.

"There's something seriously wrong with Gabrielle!" Taylor spoke with alarm to them. "She arrived to the dance in her black dress instead of her white one, and she suddenly changed her opinion about her cousin. It's as if she's possessed or been replaced."

"Another thing I just realized a few minutes ago." Chad spoke up. "That scar on her forehead. It's not there. I don't think that's her."

"That doesn't make sense." Kelsey reacted and looked to Ryan. "She's had that scar for years. It just doesn't vanish overnight."

"Guys!" Ryan opened the closet and looked at the floor of the closet. Laying on the floor beneath the towels and cleaning supplies, Gabrielle slept peacefully as Maddie fluttered and swooped down to her. Taylor dropped to check her out, Kelsey taking her hand to pat her hand and wake her. Chad and Ryan stood and watched as Taylor held Gabrielle's head in her hands, stroked the hair off her forehead scar and smelled her breath to detect a potion.

"Cinnamon…" She smelled it. "She's got cinnamon on her breath!"

"Sharpay…" Ryan realized the truth. "Sharpay has got a Sleeping Beauty potion made from cinnamon she's used on me several times. Eventually, I developed an antidote spell to it." He pulled out his wand to use it on Gabrielle. "_Hypnos Arrestum_!!!"

"Oh, Troy…." In the Assembly Hall made over as a ballroom, the fake Gabrielle beamed happily in her date's arms. "I feel so safe in your arms."

"Yeah…" Troy sounded annoyed. "You know, you've been acting… a little weird."

"Really?" Gabrielle made an evil little grin. "Well, you know, my entire family's weird. You know, we live above a sandwich shop, one of my cousins is evil and the other one is a geek." She described them as through the words of someone else. "And their little brother, he's an idiot, so if you don't want to be with me, why don't you go back to Sharpay. I think you two would be perfect together."

"I don't want to date Sharpay." Troy told her. "She's crazy."

"What?!!!" Gabrielle sounded offended.

"Gabrielle, " Troy stroked her face with his fingertips. "I'm crazy about you. You're sweet and beautiful and fun to be with. All the stuff Sharpay is not. If you acting a little weird is part of it, I'll live with it." She tipped her head up to kiss her.

"I'm going to need a lot of polyjuice potion…." Gabrielle mumbled under breath as her lips rose to meet his.

"Sharpay!!!" Someone screamed upset and their heads turned to the entry way as Gabrielle entered again her in her white dress joined by Ryan, Chad, Kelsey and Taylor. Several other students looked up to see her enter and approach her duplicate with Troy. No one seemed to know what was going on. A few wanted to find out what was going on, but others remained uninterested and continued dancing. The teachers in attendance as chaperones started wondering about the drama unfolding twenty feet into the hall. Confused and stunned, Troy looked from the Gabrielle with him in black to the one in white.

"Sharpay," Gabrielle looked at her imposter with Troy as her friends gathered round. "Is there something you want to tell me?"

"What's going on here?" Troy thought he was losing his mind. Two Gabrielles in different dresses?

"It's Sharpay, Troy!!!" The one in black held on to him. "Look, she used a spell to change herself into me!" The real Gabrielle reacted offended.

"Oh, come off it, Sharpay…" Kelsey conjured her Remembrall. "No one is that stupid. Troy, put this in her hand. If it turns bright green, it means she's not Gabrielle."

"What's going on here?" Professor McGonagal came into the confrontation with Professor Snape to investigate what was going on. She noticed the two Gabrielles. "What sort of magic is this?"

"That's Sharpay!!!" The two clones accused each other.

"Sharpay made a polyjuice potion." Taylor told the truth to McGonagal, and Snape reacted to the news as if he already knew. "All we have to do is wait two hours for it to wear off and she'll change back."

"Two hours?" The Gabrielle in the black dress reacted. "Troy, I've got a really bad headache… Could you take me back to Gryffindor, and, uh-oh…" Her bosom was swelling up inside her dress, two seams popped along her sides and she started feeling her skin and body tissue stretching her body back out to size. She held on to Troy in pain as her body reverted back to her true size in Gabrielle's smaller size dress. The color in her brunette hair started fading back to blonde and extending longer down her back in front of everyone watching. A few more people stopped to watch out of morbid curiosity. Gabrielle herself covered her mouth alarmed to watch her duplicate turning into the blonde diva.

"She looks like she's hulking out!" Chad commented.

"Did I say two hours?" Taylor added. "I meant two minutes. Polyjuice potions never last more than an hour."

In the center of the open Assembly Hall, Troy suddenly found himself holding Sharpay. She looked up into his eyes and down upon herself in Gabrielle's smaller sized black dress just barely held together at the seams. One deep breath, and it would be down around her ankles.

"It was her!" She pointed at Gabrielle. "I'm the real Gabrielle. She turned me into her to throw you all off. It's true!!" It was a weak try, but she attempted it. Snape confronted her with his wand drawn.

"I knew you three girls were stealing from my private stock." He stared Sharpay down as if he had expected much better deception from her. "If you three don't want to be expelled, you had better be in my office bright and early at seven for punishment and don't be late! The three of you might want to bring your toothbrushes because there is a lot of scrubbing that needs to be done!" His voiced hissed just barely restraining his disapproval and hostility before pulling his black robe closed and turning away madder than he'd ever been with any other Slitherin student under his charge.

"And I'm sure Professor Dumbledore and I might be able to add that punishment as well." McGonagal added and turned away as students returned to dancing. Sharpay stood and looked around as Troy was reunited with his Gabrielle. Taylor and Chad drifted away, and Ryan extended his hand to Kelsey to dance with him. Feeling alone, trapped in an undersized black dress about to pop off her body and unsure what to do, Sharpay looked at Troy once more and noticed Lily over near the fireplace.

"Okay…" She stared Lily down. "Who forgot to tell me that polyjuice potions only last for one hour?!"

"That must have been on the page we forgot to rip out of the book." Lily replied a bit annoyed.

"Great…great…" Sharpay strutted back and forth in Gabrielle's dress scared to death about taking a deep breath. "Gabrielle gets Troy, we have to get up early for punishment, and now I don't have a date and have to stand around with you!" She snapped at Lily and looked around. "Where's Tawni?"

"Over there…" Lily nervously pointed over to near the entranceway where several of the other students were dancing to the music. At first, she couldn't see Tawni what with all the older students dancing and moving into her line of sight, but then she noticed William Samms and in his arms was Tawni with her head to his chest and her arms around his shoulders. He seemed content as he swayed slowly with her close to him, his cheek close to her cheek.

"What does she possibly see in him?" Sharpay reacted confused.

"You didn't hear?" Lily looked at her. "His family has money… maybe more than yours."

"What?!"

"That's not all…" Lily came up closer. "Wait till you hear who his grandfather is supposed to be!" She leaned in and whispered in Sharpay's ear as the blonde one reacted with stunned surprise. Her mouth dropped open out of shock and her eyes widened eagerly.

"No!!!" She looked back at William and Tawni while pushing Lily away and marched across the room eager and hurried to fix her current dating status. Tawni was giggling to be with this shy young man and looking forward to taking him out of his shell.

"Let's get a drink…" William led Tawni over to the snack tables.

"I'll follow you anywhere, baby…" Tawni gushed deeply infatuated, looked over to Sharpay marching over in that undersized dress and was suddenly twirled right out of the assembly hall. Sharpay took her by the arm and swung her through the doors and out onto the balcony over the entrance hall. A brief shriek and she was out of the picture. Without her, the blonde diva grinned and took Tawni's place as William's date. The dark-haired Gryffindor student turned round to meet his new company as Sharpay grabbed him tightly and contently with a big hug and big happy smile on her face.

"What just happened here?" He stood confused and holding two cups of apple cider while looking around the room.

The music stopped and the room turned to Professor Dumbledore at the podium on the teacher's platform with Professor McGonagal at his side. They looked across pleasantly across their students and observed their faces drawing near.

"Another year gone…" Dumbledore spoke to his students. "And as I understand, the house cup needs awarding and the current points stand as thus: At fourth place, Gryffindor house with three-hundred and forty two points…."

The Gryffindor students cheered together from scattered across the room.

"At third place," Dumbledore continued. "Ravenclaw with three-hundred and eighty-one points…"

The Ravenclaw students cheered along with Taylor looking around for her house brothers and sisters.

"At second place, Hufflepuff with four-hundred and eighteen points…"

Ryan and Kelsey jumped up and clapped with their house members. Several of their friends in the other houses clapped to share in their support.

"And at first place, Slitherin with four hundred and twenty-one points." Dumbledore announced as Slitherin cheered louder and more obnoxiously than any of the other houses. Lily was getting to know Second Year Brad O'Keefe from Hufflepuff House and Tawni came back in mouth hanging open as Sharpay stood with William. Sharpay got too excited and cheered as the top of her dress finally popped apart; William throwing his coat around her to protect her dignity.

"Yes, yes, well done, Slitherin. However…" Dumbledore continued. "Certain events I've since been informed of must be taken into account, and several more points must be submitted. To Miss Taylor McKessie of Ravenclaw, for her cool use of intellect when others were in peril, fifty points."

Chad held Taylor's hand up and she jerked it down than be embarrassed. Her house members applauded her.

"To Mr. Troy Boyden…" Dumbledore went onward. "For effortless mastery of a broom in flight under impossibly difficult conditions, fifty points."

Gryffindor clapped for him, and Gabrielle hugged and kissed him.

"To Miss Kelsey Nielsen of Hufflepuff…" Dumbledore looked to her up close to him as she reacted a bit shy. "For the most gifted young musical talent when it was most needed, fifty points."

Ryan lifted Kelsey up off her feet to congratulate her.

"To Mr. Chad Danforth," Dumbledore surprised the young man with the hair. "For knowing when to risk one's only life even when another life was in danger, fifty points."

Troy raced over and cheered his best friend in front of the fireplace.

"To Miss Gabrielle Russo," Dumbledore looked toward the young Waverly princess not far from Troy. "For pure nerve and courageous spirit even in the face of defying odds, sixty points…" Nearly fainting, Gabrielle felt Troy there to catch her from fainting.

"And lastly…" Dumbledore started to wrap. "It takes a lot of bravery to stand up to one's enemies, but a great deal more to stand up to your friends. That's why I'm awarding twenty-five points, to William…." He paused there to avoid revealing the young man's real name. "Samms." Everyone looked up to William about to escort Sharpay back to her house. Suddenly everyone was looking at him and he didn't get it. Troy and Chad came over to pull him back into the cheering room.

"Assuming that my calculations are correct, I assume a change of decorations is in order." Dumbledore clapped his hands and the green Slitherin flags in the room left over as last years House Cup Winners started waving and changing into the blue and gold flags of Gryffindor House. The entire room roared excitedly for the change except a majority of Slitherin bullies and malcontents used to running loose through the school. They sneered and made faces of derision to be forced into their proper place. On stage, Hagrid himself cheered the change and Dumbledore gestured for the kids to have their music back to truly celebrate the end of the school year. Troy and Gabrielle were laughing together, and Chad playfully bumped Troy while racing around with Taylor. Kelsey and Ryan stopped and watched amazed when William chucked his wand away and gestured a long white ball gown to appear on Sharpay under his coat. It was quite a feat when he pulled his coat away to reveal her properly attired. With the right dress, she didn't feel like leaving the room.

"_I'm soaring… flying_…" Troy was singing to Gabrielle to the music. "_There's not a star in heaven we can't resist_…"

"_We're breaking free_…" Gabrielle grinned to him as the music changed.

"_Together, together… together everyone_…" It was a different type of music resonating through the school as the ghosts started dancing in the air ten feet off the floor.

"_Together, together, come on, let's have some fun_…" The students started coming together in sync.

"_Together, we're there for each other every time_…" They faced each other holding hands.

"_Together, together, come on, let's do this right_…" The room was turning into an almost perfectly choreographed scene of students dancing in circles and joining hands. Gabrielle hopping through and around others as Troy caught up with her.

"_Here and now, it's time for celebration_…" Ryan jumped up on a table with Kelsey. "_I finally figured it out… that our dreams have no limitations. That's what it's all about_!"

"_Everyone is special in their own way_…" Sharpay belted out lyrics as well escorting William at her side as she revealed her white Cinderella dress. "_We make each other strong… We're not the same… we're different in a good way… Together is where we belong_!!!"

"_We're all here_…" Troy revealed his incredible voice to Gabrielle. "_And speaking out with one voice. We're going to rock the house. The party's on now, everybody make some noise. Come on and shout_…" He lifted her up onto another table with him.

"_We've arrived because we stuck together… champions one and all_…" She lent her voice to his.

"_We're all in this together_…" The four houses joined together in celebration to the music and the school year. "_Gryffindor… In the house_!!!" On stage, Professor Dumbledore mused proudly as if he was a grandfather with excess of four hundred children. He just happened to glance over and noticed McGonagal trying to duplicate the kids' dance moves. On his other side, Hagrid was bouncing up and down and swaying his arms a bit to the music. Snape barely moved, but he stiffly moved to the tune as if he were a weather vane in a terrible wind. At that moment out in the North Sea, Alex Russo was even swaying in her cell at Azkaban as she tried to escape the prison.

"What is this?" At the entrance to the Assembly Hall, Harry Potter led Hermione Granger as his date to the party a bit late. With them, Ron Weasley was escorting Luna Lovegood. They looked at the goings on, shook their heads changing their minds and turned back. Luna meanwhile grinned and pulled Ron into the party.

"Do you think every year will be like this one?" Troy asked Gabrielle at the fireplace.

"I know it will…" She wrapped her arms around him and kissed him as fireworks exploded from the enchanted ceiling.

END


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